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INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM; 



OR, 



EMANCIPATION 



FROM 



MENTAL AND PHYSICAL BONDAGE. 



CHARLES S. WOODEUEF, M. D„ 

AUTHOR OP "LEGALIZED PROSTITUTION," ETC. 






SINCLAIR TOUSEY, 

121 Nassau Street, N. Y. 
AGENT FOR THE AUTHOR. 



vrt 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

CHAS. S* WOODRUFF, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for 

the Northern District of New York. 



l& [> k 



; 



THE CAUSE OF HUMA.N PROGRESS, 

EIGHT, TEUTH, AND JUSTICE, 

THIS LITTLE WRITING IS SINCERELY 

DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 



Seeing the many evils which oppress and enslave 
the people, both black and white, in all sections of 
our country, a land called free, prompts me to the 
writing of this volume, hoping thereby to do some- 
thing towards the amelioration of the wrongs com- 
mitted by many of our present social and political 
institutions. 

Slavery, in all forms, is a thing of man, not of God ; 
in His wide domains there is room for all to be free 
and happy. The Birthright of all is LIBERTY. 

My aim in writing a work of this kind is not so 
much to review' the past as it has been, or the present 
as it is, but rather to set forth the new, the right and 
truth of living, as glan/ed from the equitable and just 
principles of nature in all conditions of life, adhering 
to her unerring laws as my guide, and draw there- 
from logical deductions to the clear comprehension of 
all my readers, thus showing life in all its phases, to 
be justly freedom. 

C. S. Woodruff. 
Troy, N. T. } 1863. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page. 
Nature and her teachings 9 



CHAPTER II. 
Freedom and Slavery 22 

CHAPTER ni. 
Social Slavery. 33 

CHAPTER IV. 
Religious Slavery 54 

CHAPTER V. 
Physical Slavery 101 

CHAPTER VI. 
Epilogue to America Ill 



INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 



CHAPTEE I. * 

NATURE ANI£ HER TEACHINGS. 

In heading this chapter with the above caption, I 
do so because there is but one just standard of right, 
and that is nature / for if there is truth in the world it 
must have been established by the power that created 
all things, as the finite mind cannot conceive of good 
or right as emanating from but one source, and that 
source Deity. God, or those principles of life which 
we call by the name of God, invisible essences of cre- 
ation, the powers that originate and unfold life, either 
did or did not originate this world, and if the force or 
forces called Deity did originate the earth, he still 
sustains and controls it : I say that he did make it, 
and does sustain and control it, and presume upon no 
opposition to the assertion. We have, then, the fact 
established and admitted that Deity is the Author and 
Ruler of the world (earth), and, as such, is responsible 
for all its attributes, out of which flow all goodness, 
all truth, all life ; therefore do I again back myself up 
with the assertion that nature, fresh from the hands 
of Deity, is the only just standard of right, and oui 
i* 



10 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

only truthful instructor. If in nature is the all of life, 
and the controller is the omnipotent power, then it is 
self-evident that man's source of knowledge must ne- 
cessarily be in discovering her laws and learning her 
secrets, since her laws are Deity's instructions, and her 
secrets his wishes; so that man becomes a truthful 
teacher only in so far as he unravels and expounds the 
science of nature, elucidating her laws and principles 
justly. *A11 of art is nature's imitation, all of science 
her study. 

I use the word nature in its most comprehensive 
sense, meaning all of this, our globe, with its produc- 
tions and surroundings; while by universe I intend to 
convey an idea of the whole of creation, comprising 
all worlds, all space, all life, as filling, so far as the 
human mind can conceive, immeasurable immensity ; 
therefore, when I say nature, I mean earth more espe- 
cially, with every thing that pertains thereto ; its laws 
of life, all its different unfoldments, its science, beauty, 
order, and sublimity, which qualities are unfolded to 
us by study and culture. Nature is not an unfathom- 
able mystery, but rather stands ever ready to yield up 
her truths and treasures to the deserving investigator ; 
as fast as man fits himself by right culture to receive, 
she instructs him nobly and wisely, infilling and en- 
larging his mental capacity into fulness, that he may 
really be deserving the place he naturally occupies as 
the climax of creative wisdom, and be capable of solv- 
ing all the secrets of the natural world, to which he 
belongs, and whose science he should be master of in 
almost unlimited abundance. 



NATIJKE AND HER TEACHINGS. 11 

Nature lias three kingdoms, or general grades of 
development, not distinctly separate from each other, 
but belonging to and sustaining each other recipro- 
cally ', the basic one of the three being the mineral, 
next in order the vegetable, then the animal, each sus- 
tained by spirit, mdwelling in its every particle as 
the law of its existence, that spirit or law being Deific 
vitality, infilling and causing earth, life, beauty, and 
power ; bound into all the rest of creation, the same 
as a cup of water from the ocean is but a small portion 
of a great sea of water, and separated into the cup 
from the general fund is still water, the same as man's 
spirit, separated from the great fund of infinity, is 
still, in the individualized condition, but a portion, a 
specie, of the Deity fund or life element, gradually 
grown and incarcerated in the physical form for a 
while, that the physical may be used to good physical 
purposes, and the spirit identified into personified in- 
telligence, to find its home in the blue ether, — its na- 
tive and proper element, — when the physical is laid 
aside, retaining still its individual power and identity. 

The mineral is no more of nature than the vegetable 
and animal, for from the mineral do the vegetable 
and animal spring : each and all alike products from 
the maternal womb of nature, and bound in one united 
whole by the laws of reciprocal unity. 

Man in his higher state of development belongs to, 
and depends quite as much upon the forces in the 
natural world about him for life and sustenance, as 
the meanest reptile that crawls, or the crudest plant, 
and owes the same allegiance to the divine laws ot 



12 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

control as the majestic woods and fruitful fields that 
everywhere surround him, teeming with life and 
beauty. Thus we see the proper relations man sus- 
tains to the natural world, and to try to go outside of, 
or away from those relations, is to try to go away from 
self, since that self is itself a part of nature; therefore, 
to deny one's lord and master, by disowning connec- 
tion with and dependence upon the infinitely consti- 
tuted authority of bountiful nature, is sacrilege. Man 
cannot go away from nature because he cannot go 
where nothing is / if he could leave all other things, 
still himself would follow and be with him, and con- 
stantly under the guide and sustenance of the laws of 
his nature. 

Trained and brought up under the influence of su- 
perstitious customs and beliefs, instead of science, 
man learns to regard his being upon earth as a miracle, 
from which he finally escapes through miraculous 
resurrection at the judgment-day, when the horn of the 
man Gabriel shall sound the alarm ! A very nice 
theory, ^fman had not a reason and common sense to 
tell him of a better one, more founded upon truth and 
natural philosophy j but having wrong training, man 
comes to regard the nature, in the midst of which he 
is placed and from which he is a germ, as bearing no 
relations to him any farther than it serves his comfort 
and happiness ; he loses, or never gains sight of, the 
beautiful relations he sustains to the nature that is so 
lavish for his support and advancement,nor once thinks 
to catechize her for wise and instructive lessons of life 
while really every breath he draws, every enjoyment 



NATURE AND HEK TEACHINGS. 13 

and knowledge be gains, is from her vast storehouse, 
and lie the climax of her wisely working laws for the 
evolution of the useful, beautiful, intelligent, and re- 
fined. Noble man is nature's culmination in the pro- 
gress of development and unfolding of her vast riches 
and mighty secrets, for man is her profoundest secret ; 
he stands the crowning result of those beautiful and 
wonderful operations of nature, which, for an illimita- 
ble time, have been working his magical evolution, 
and yet he forgets to turn from his grand stand-point 
in the advance, and note the series of growths and 
gradations of unfoldment by which he has attained 
to his present development, knowledge, and usefulness ; 
forgets to study the scientific laws, through whose 
operation he has a being, and is sustained in his proper 
sphere ; forgets that to nature he owes every thing, and 
from her must gain all his life, growth, knowledge, 
and wisdom. 

Nature is all alive ; man her highest development 
and most wonderful and powerful production ; eter- 
nal progress is her aim, and incessant ACTION her 
secret of richness and beauty. Change continual and 
everlasting marks her onward march. The present, 
like the to-days, is fast becoming yesterdays, while 
the new is ever coming like the to-morrow, so steady, 
sure, and perfect does the passage of time work its un- 
foldings, adding each moment a drop to the eternity 
of the past, and drawing constantly one atom more 
from the inexhaustible future. We see the old die, 
and note the changes which follow in the new spring- 
ing life therefrom, and exclaim, Surely death is life, 



14: INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

and change progress ! The world constantly dies to 
live, and lives to die, and, watching her processes, we 
learn that were death not, life could not be. Thus is 
every thing life, and death only the change it under- 
goes to better live. Death is a comparative term, and 
means simply a change of action, change of shape 
and mission, the decomposed matter living as much 
and really in its decomposition as before, decompos- 
ing being a step in its refinement. 

Creation is a unit, and yet composed of innumer- 
able units, all in unity or harmony of action, all 
at-one, and life is self-sustaining. The forces of na- 
ture all act in spheres or spherically, the chain of 
action being an eternal round ; there is no end, so far 
as we can conceive, and consequently there could 
have been no beginning to life ; it always has been, is, 
and ever will be, and perpetual motion is its eternal 
order. 

Of atoms or worlds the form is round, a single 
cell constituting vegetable or animal fibre, being as 
complete as a world. All nature is but a vast conglo- 
meration of minute cells, or in other words microsco- 
pic worlds, in which indwells the spirit of life, giving 
each one affinity and usefulness with all the rest. 
Thus we analyze matter by reducing it to the very 
finest conditions which material means are capable of 
doing, and ascertain that there is no end to its divisi- 
bility; however fine, it still is matter possessed of 
life, the same as before its trituration, and by the 
nicest means found in the chemist's laboratory, the 
exact point where matter leaves off and spirit begins, 



NATUKE AND HEK TEACHINGS. 15 

has never been ascertained, neither can it ever be, 
and he who labors to draw a dividing line must ever 
labor in vain, there being such mutual relations and 
blendings between them as will not admit of sepa- 
ration. 

Matter is the crudest spirit ; spirit the most refined 
and attenuated matter. Matter is not, without spirit, 
and spirit is not, without matter ; they hold opposite 
extremes, the beautiful mean being man's hrain mat- 
ter. Could we conceive of the possibility of the sepa- 
ration of spirit from matter, we could understand such 
a thing as annihilation — neither can be. Like good 
and evil, matter and spirit bear comparative relations 
to each other, both one and the same in opposite ex- 
tremes, yet ever in the mean blending beautifully. 
Earth is continually imbued and vitalized by spirit 
penetrating every portion of it, animate and inani- 
mate, which grows the grass-blade, sustains animal 
life, works out its own science through its own pro- 
ductions, and, being comparatively as much in man 
as in other "forms of life, dwells as much with him as 
a thousand miles in air ; so earth and heaven are eter- 
nally together, the same as matter and spirit, the 
terms being identical, earth and matter, heaven and 
spirit. I speak not of the fabulous heaven of super- 
stitious dogmas, material and paved with gold, where 
congregate the resurrected material todies, but of the 
true heaven where dwell disembodied souls, and which 
bears the same relation to earth as does spirit to mat- 
ter ; for it would hardly be logical to say that spirits 
dwell in material abodes — material in the sense of 



16 ENTELLFCTUAE FREEDOM. 

crude, unspiritualized matter — but more in accord- 
ance with science, philosophy, and good sense, to give 
them habitation in the blue ether, which surrounds 
earth, and is the spirit element of nature, or spirit- 
ualized element of nature. Heaven mdwells in the 
human soul, and that soul, whether clothed upon by 
the mortal or immortal, is continually in heaven if 
serving the high and useful mission of living out the 
object of its creation. 

In a creation which finite minds cannot determine 
any bounds, beginning or end to, by any known laws 
of life, does the idea of a located heaven, fenced in, 
in the unknown somewhere, seem reasonable or logical ? 
Creation, on the contrary, is all wrapped up within 
itself, matter and spirit continually, beautifully blend- 
ed together ; and the earth, with all the other worlds 
and systems of worlds of which we know something 
through astronomical science, and the vast amount 
which we are unable to fathom, constitute creation, 
all God, all nature, all life, matter, and spirit. It is all 
one beautiful whole, too grand for the human mind to 
fully contemplate, and too extended for its circum- 
scription or centralization. 

We are the legitimate offspring of this portion of 
creation, earth, and as such it is our first duty to know 
something of the source from whence we spring, the 
nature that surrounds us, and of which we form a 
part. Self study and the study of nature constitute 
a momentous task, as pleasing as they are instructive, 
for they teach us truth, which is wisdom ; experience 
begets knowledge, knowledge wisdom, therefore, ask 



NATURE AND HER TEACHINGS. 17 

and it shall be told you, knock and the secrets of na- 
ture shall be opened unto you, that you may enter 
into the enjoyment of all the blessings prepared for 
those who rightly understand how and why they live. 

As all truth is embodied in nature, so all knowledge 
must be gained therefrom ; there is no other source 
or fountain to draw from, and those who have the best 
conceptions of natural laws and forces, will be the 
most substantial and brightest lights of the age. 

It will be ascertained from my writings, thart I be- 
lieve God to be a principle universal, and not a per- 
sonal being, and that that principle is spirit, as broad 
in its application as creation, and that spirit, life, and 
that life dual, having, under all circumstances and in 
all conditions of development, two extremes, or posi- 
tive and negative relations, which, blending and balanc- 
ing, produce the perfect equilibrium there is among nat- 
ural forces, to rightly understand which, we have to 
place our conceptions into terms of 'definite significance, 
the same as in speaking of other objects ; therefore, I 
shall call them magnetism and electricity, magnetism 
being the positive, or heat, and electricity the negative, 
or cold ; or magnetism one extreme, and electricity the 
other, continually blending in all things, forming the 
facts and phenomena of life. 

God, then, is a comprehensive term, meaning the 
whole life force of creation, and the superstition con- 
nected with the word God — the result of ignorance — 
must give way to the light of science, philosophy, and 
reason, for the growing intellect of man begins to ana- 
lyze the subject of life by reason, rather than longer 



18 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

believe every my thy theory upon faith alone ; faith 
is an essential element or faculty of our composition, 
but unless under the guidance of reason, is often a 
hindrance to our progress, leading to the entertain- 
ment of wrong beliefs, thus clogging the wheels of 
time, whose continual revolutions evolve progression 
to the thinker. 

Life is ours, continually staring us in the face, and 
is for us to deal with practically, understanding it 
rightly; and living it out* trutJifully. We must first 
know what it is, then we can give it its right appli- 
cation. It is not something to ever be feared, and 
dreamed of, a fancy-painted heaven or hell, but is 
with us each moment of time / we act it, breathe it, 
consume it, and live it constantly ; therefore how im- 
portant we should understand it, and live well and 
usefully the everliving present. As the passage of 
time is continual, so is the passage of life with us ; a 
moment past is a moment gone forever, and ill or well 
spent, so eternally remains. 

In living, then, we have to deal with facts, science, 
and reason, understanding that earth is a part of the 
universe, and that man is one of its productions, a 
microscopic speck, springing into life through natural 
processes, and roaming awhile upon its surface to do 
his mission in life, finally dissolving back again into 
atomic particles, his spirit, which the body served to 
grow, evaporating into air, a spirit entity as much at 
home in its ethereal element as is the dust of the tody 
in earth. 

The ball from whence man springs is his school of 



NATURE AND HER TEACHINGS. 19 

life, and from that school must he draw his fill con- 
tinually ; but he draws as he understands. Look at a 
glass globe filled with water and fishes, and you have 
some faint symbol of the great sea of life, in which 
float all the worlds of immensity / some slight idea 
may thus be gained of the universe. Each one of the 
worlds thus floating in spirit, gives off its own peculiar 
atmosphere, 'or spirit emanations. Viewed in this 
light, let us take the earth, of which we know some- 
thing, because a part of, swimming as it is in the ether 
surrounding it, and giving off its own sphere of air 
and life products, from the lowest form of vegetable 
to noblest man, and then we can form a just idea of 
the legitimate relations man bears to the world from 
which he originates ; he belongs to earth, it is his na- 
tive element, and the life forces in him and surround- 
ing him, are the means at his command by which he 
is at will to work out his mission nobly or poorly. 
Let him think and interrogate nature constantly, and 
wise and elevated will be his course through the time 
allotted him to live in the clayey tenement, and pro- 
gressed his entrance into spirit life. 

I labor to impress upon the minds of my readers 
this one idea, that man is born of nature, through the 
working of natural laws, or forces, and that he must 
ever turn to her as a child to its mother's breast, to 
learn his truthful and wise lessons of life. 

The nature implanted in man is the highest devel- 
opment of the God-powers, and as such, must develop 
its own inherent properties irrespective of the outside 
world, for there is no parallel to his own being in ere- 



20 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

ation, by which he can shape his course so as to attain 
the highest perfection ; his own nature, therefore, must 
he worked out by its own inherent powers, and his 
faculties brought thus to their fullest cultivation ; it is 
his life science to do this ; the extent of tHe capacity 
within him to growth he but little understands, be- 
cause the prevailing methods of education are so false 
to nature's standard, viz. : spontaneous 6>w£growth 
rather than labored mgrowth or instuffing, that he 
becomes filled with many erroneous inculcations, to 
the exclusion of those inceptive truths which are in- 
herent in his nature, and would come beautifully 
forth, if not choked and crushed by too much mstuff- 
ing. 

This is why great men are great, because the nature 
in them is strong enough to override all wrong educa- 
tional bias, and the life-forces spring forth to the ad- 
miration of the world ; oftentimes, too, does the force 
of circumstances call out the inherent powers, and 
thus thrust greatness of ideas upon a man. The great- 
ness of an idea is its originality, and the origin of all 
new things with man is simply its discovery ; or, in 
other words, the advanced perceptions of an individ- 
ual, making discoveries ahead of others of his fellow- 
beings. The tendency of all human beings is towards 
greatness naturally, that is, progress in development, 
and increase of perception and understanding. We 
speak of the enlightenment of the age ; true, it is 
comparatively so, yet " there are more things in earth 
and heaven than the human mind has ever dreamed 
of." The enlightenment of the age, as much as it is, 



NATURE AND HER TEACHINGS. 21 

is still, comparatively, nothing to what there is to be 
learned, and nature is the vast storehouse that holds it 
all. Man, as yet, knows but little of himself even. ; 
his resources and powers are more susceptible of devel- 
opment and more mighty than he knows for ; neither 
can he ever know fully the ultimate of his progress, 
yet he comes nearest to it when heeding most strictly 
the laws of his own interior nature. 

The teachings of nature in every phenomenon of 
the physical world are very instructive, when we learn 
to view them through a well-cultivated understanding 
of her laws, but when viewed from a superficial exte- 
rior growth of ourselves, learn us but little. 

To appreciate nature, we must first become her 
simple, humble, and thorough students ; she is vast in 
knowledge and power ; her realms the illimitable uni- 
verse, and her inexhaustible science, God himself. 
She speaks the voice of her Creator in every manifes- 
tation of growth and decay, and man, springing from 
her maternal womb, must listen, in every act of his 
life, to the " still small voice" that within him is, as a 
part of the creation, if he would be noble, pure, and 
wise. From nature does he grow, and to nature and 
nature's God is lie accountable, and that accounta- 
bility is through himself. Self placed aright, by the 
proper cultivation, receives the blessing of " well done, 
thou good and faithful servant" to the powers of 
growth within self 



22 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 



CHAPTEE II. 

EKEEDOM AND SLAVERY. 

In the preceding chapter I have endeavored to 
show that nature is the source from whence springs 
man, and his proper relations thereto ; having done 
which, I now proceed to the consideration of the 
terms, freedom and slavery, designing to speak of 
them in their absolute and relative conditions. To 
give force to what I say, I shall aim to set forth my 
views in a logical and sequent manner, maintaining 
constantly my dependence upon natural laws ; there- 
fore, I shall first notice the universal order of creation, 
and the mutual relations the heavenly bodies sustain 
towards each other, for if there is truth, order, science, 
and law it. must be among the infinitely regulated 
solar systems, whose perfect harmony of action is 
eternally complete. 

So far as man comprehends the vast creations of 
the Infinite, he does so by means of that little divine 
spark of life within himself, which he calls his mind 
or spirit, and which is a particle of the God force in 
nature embodied in his physical organism for a time, 
probationary to .the evolvement of a matured spirit — 
earth matured. He comprehends, by means of this 
intelligent little, much of the laws that govern the 
universe, the relations to some extent of mind and 



FREEDOM AjSTD SLAVERY. 23 

matter, and the order and science of the immortal 
principle of life. 

There is no human mind so infinite in its scope of 
perception as to determine the bounds — if there be 
any — of creation, and consequently no centre. Yet, 
reasoning from the small to the great, from the known 
to the unknown, by the metaphysical powers of 
thought, the only conclusion arrived at is, that there 
must be a centre of power, which originally gave birth 
to worlds and constellations, and is still the source or 
fountain-head of infinite life, keeping the order of the 
universe complete. However true or untrue such 
reasoning may be, there still remains the unsatisfactory 
thought, that man cannot fathom divine depths and 
arrive at the first great cause of creation, for man 
would then be a God, with infinite perceptions ; back 
of his most penetrating and deepest thought remain 
unfathomable depths, and he is obliged to satisfy him- 
self with the point of development to which he has 
attained, and await the slow processes of time to re- 
veal more to his enlarged perceptions. 

He can only say that there is, from what he sees 
and knows, an all-sustaining and ruling power, which 
he calls God, and that the order of this ruling power 
is most perfect and just ; that harmony and unity of 
action mark all universal laws so far as he can .perceive, 
and that all things hold MUTUAL relations towards 
each other. He looks into the science of astronomy, 
and sees the family of the heavens in most perfect 
obedience to the laws of mutual attraction and repul- 
sion, and this leads him to the consideration that two 



24 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

forces, mighty and all-pervading, act to sustain and 
control the relation of all things to all other things, 
and these forces he can only determine as positive and 
negative, or a power of drawing and repelling, a male 
principle and female principle forming perfect wedlock, 
out of which is borned the useful, the beautiful, the 
harmony, order, majesty, and sublimity, durability, 
worth, and progress of creation, attributes and essen- 
tials all of the infinite ; in short, the infinite would 
become finite were it not perfection y perfection, not 
in the sense of having arrived at a point beyond which 
there is no growth, but perfection in order and pro- 
gress of growth. 

This power of relation between systems of worlds, 
and orbs to their central orb, can be traced down 
through all things to the very atom, where still the 
positive and negative forces hold sway, giving existence 
to the atom by their mutual blending ; thus from spirit 
is formed the atom ; from atoms, massive worlds ; 
from worlds, constellations ; from constellations a uni- 
verse ; and so on till where the end is, man knows 
not ; but from atoms to worlds, and worlds to a uni- 
verse, the laws of attraction and repulsion, or, in other 
words, harmony and order, hold good. The mutual 
relations are perfect in the order of economy divine, 
and orbs or atoms fulfil the mission assigned by the 
Creator, teaching man, the acme of embodied intelli- 
gence, instructive and useful lessons. 

All worlds bear relations of mutual interest to all 
other worlds, and all things and beings of a world, 
their inevitable dependence upon and destiny with 



FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 25 

that world, and thus the laws of creation are as vast 
as eternal, linked in perfect sympathy of operation, 
all free and all bond. And so it is the terms freedom 
and slavery are defined ; there is no absolute freedom 
or slavery, but freedom is the MUTUAL relations 
and dependence of all things to all other things, while 
absolute freedom, or entire and isolated independence 
of all other objects, is impossible. In one sense every 
thing is free ; in another and equally truthful sense, 
every thing is slave, or there is no entire indepen 
dence, and consequently there is a degree of slavery 
that is just, divinely just. 

Thus we see the proper and beautiful relations 
which all natural powers sustain towards each other, 
and can deduce therefrom our truthful lessons of life. 
We learn that man, like all else, is free and slave — 
free to follow out the laws of his own being in their 
just relations to the world of life about him, and slave 
only in the laws of reciprocity, which demand that he 
shall give as he receives, and receive as he gives, or 
that his slavery and freedom shall be of mutual de- 
pendence. 

Absolute freedom, and absolute slavery, I repeat, 
are impossible ; the nearest man can come to the 
former, is in adhering strictly to the higher laws 
of his nature, while the most absolute slavery con- 
sists in being deprived of the full exercise of those 
higher laws, by taking away, temporarily, the right 
to use his own body and mind for his highest and best 
good — the inalienable right vouchsafed to him by his 
Creator. 
2 



26 INTELLECTUAL FKEEDOM. 

The justness of divine wisdom is seen in the laws 
of the universe, holding suns and worlds in reciprocal 
relations, the power of one being fully reciprocated by 
another, the sun, or centre of attraction, holding the 
lesser orbs that revolve about it, with only that degree 
of power that they in turn exert upon it ; the earth, 
for instance, holds just that amount of attraction for 
the sun that the sun exerts upon the earth, thereby 
keeping the harmony, out of which results all the 
beautiful and useful there is in nature. Herein we 
learn another law of life, that the strong control the 
weak, or the larger the lesser, but only under recipro- 
cal relations, or the controlling power receiving only 
as it gives ; and most beautiful and instructive is the 
contemplation of the order divine, as seen in universal 
laws ; and when man learns to comprehend those laws, 
and apply them to himself, will he meet the demands 
of divine justice within himself, knowing the powers 
of his own being, and how to rightly use them. The 
laws of life are plain, and all that man has to do to 
rear himself a noble and wise being, is to study 
into and understand them ; they teach him the right 
course in all his dealings, and under all circumstances. 
Freedom he can only have in its fullest sense by 
knowing and living up to the laws of his nature. 
There is no standard of right but the divine, and that 
teaches plainly that all men are born free, in their re- 
ciprocal relations, and that no man has the God-given 
right to call them slaves. What is one man's freedom 
may be another's slavery, the conditions of humanity 
are so various ; yet what each is capable of enjoying, 



FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 27 

that is his eternal inheritance, and high or low states 
of development are attended respectively with their 
peculiar receptive and enjoyable capacities. 

Freedom to the low-born is as much his happiness 
as freedom to the high-born, though the two condi- 
tions are widely different ; and one is as much ac- 
countable to the laws of his being as the other, for as 
there are not, nor can be any two human develop- 
ments exactly alike in point of organization, there 
needs must be every conceivable difference in growth 
to fill the eternal plan, and form the consecutive links 
in the great humanitary chain. Such is God's order ; 
and because to keep that order complete there are 
such varied conditions, man cannot safely infringe 
upon his weaker brother's rights, nor trespass upon 
law divine — the elements of truth, light, and life will 
not admit of it, and monarchies built upon slavery, 
republics harboring it within the sacred folds of free- 
dom's banner, must ultimately shake and convulse 
with the mighty throes of revolution to rid them- 
selves of the noxious element, as America is now 
doing, because it has nursed the adder of slavery, 
mental and physical, at its national breasts, fed the 
many-tongued viper from its own warm blood, until 
at last it turns and stings her to the heart; and behold 
her mighty agony in administering the antidote — 
horrid civil war ! 

The just relations between the high and low born — 
I use the terms high and low in the sense of develop- 
ment, not blood — should ever be determined by the 
divine standard of right, as seen regulating in harmo- 



28 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

ny all things, and no man be another's slave or master 
any further than he gives as he receives, and vice 
versa. For one man to deprive another of the free use 
of his powers of life is grossly wrong, I care not how 
low in the scale of development he may be. Even the 
brute should be the recipient of humane and kind care, 
for the service he brings us ; the law of reciprocal inter 
est should extend to the horse or ox, and he be given 
all he can receive in food and kindness for his use to 
man. Under all circumstances there stands the law 
of reciprocity, to try and evade which, brings a sure 
penalty. 

Slave is a word not written in the divine voca- 
bulary, save that which confers a mutual benefit ; 
there is no such thing any where in the broad universe 
as slavery or oppression, sanctioned by right divine, 
but on the contrary, every language of the Omnipo- 
tent, as written in every science and upon every 
natural outburst of life power, teaches that all things 
are free. 

Man transgresses the laws of life and penalties fol- 
low, which is most emphatically exemplified in the 
mighty tumult which upheaves and dismembers our 
fair land of America — " the land of the free and 
home of the brave," and likewise the land of the 
slave ! She but pays the penalty of her misdeeds ; in 
her heart's core, the Constitution, has she nursed the 
seedlings of slavery, vile and corrupting to every thing 
it touches, until it has grown to a gigantic size, 
almost outvieing in power the very principles of free- 
dom ; law divine has been transgressed and the conse- 



FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 29 

quences follow, and terible must be her punishment, 
for grave have been her errors. No power can inter- 
vene to stay the revolution, bloody and terrible as it 
is, until her regeneration is complete, and the full 
penalty of her wrongs given ; for the law of reciprocity 
is one of supreme justice, and no hand can stay its 
avenging power until right is made might. The era 
of reason and justice dawns, and in proportion to its 
advance must fall off the shackles of error and super- 
stition. Oppression of the low born has been in our 
midst, oppression of free thought and free speech, 
oppression of mind to ignorance and priestly craft, to 
fashion and form, and a thousand vices of living, the 
result in a very great degree of wrong education, a 
passion rule, gratifying morbid tastes and desires, 
selfish greediness and animal propensities, and now 
stern justice is striking her axe, with masterly power 
and skill, at the root of the monster evils, that the 
divine fiat may be executed, which went forth in the 
construction of the world. America set herself up to 
be a free nation, after hard struggles to free herself 
from the despotic tyranny of aristocratic Europe, 
planting herself upon the God-given principles of 
liberty, and immediately began suckling at her mater- 
nal breast an institution of slavery, which gradually 
worked its way securely into the national heart as 
one of the rights of its Constitution, and the result of 
two diametrically opposed institutions, freedom and 
slavery, is at hand, and we are fighting again the 
bloody battles of the revolution, but this time to free 
ourselves of the accursed- institution we ourselves 



30 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

have reared in our midst, through short-sighted and 
temporal views ; this time however, ten-fold more des- 
perate because more powerful, and thrice horrible be- 
cause a civil strife. 

Nations, like individuals, must pay the penalty of 
wrong doing, and always revolutions occur as the nat- 
ural result of disobeying divine justice. The blood- 
shed and carnage, the wails of bereaved thousands, that 
desolate our fair land and make sad the hearts and 
hopes of all, cannot be averted, for the causes have 
been aggravated, and while they last the effects must 
be seen and felt. It is a sad thought however, that 
many who have lived entirely innocent of the dark 
stains which are now being wiped out, should bear 
part of the burden of dire war, and share in suffering 
its calamities, yet in the common lot of a nation's 
people, the innocent must suffer ofttimes for the 
guilty ; yet there is a consolation in knowing, that 
out of all our sufferings will eventually come the 
brightest nation, the grandest republic the world ever 
saw. Purged and cleansed of all our national sins 
w r e shall stand forth a most glorious example of 
human liberty, based upon the God-given principles 
of freedom. America takes the lead among nations, 
the beacon light for the world to follow ; Europe 
trembles upon the verge of revolution, and monar- 
chies and aristocracies seem crumbling beneath the 
light of increasing justice and the advance march of 
truth. And why should it not be so % If there is a 
power supreme, sitting in judgment over all tem- 
poral and eternal things, and that power is a just 



FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 31 

God — a divine principle of life, from whose almighty 
and inexhaustible fountain spring all worlds, all life, 
all truth and justice, it must eventually bring under 
subjugation to divine rule the wayward and erroneous 
actions of man. Either man is more mighty than 
Deity or that Deity is not just, if man is not brought 
to the acknowledgment of the right, and governed by 
eternal principles. As he grows to the better exer- 
cise of reason, he must yield obedience to the laws 
which govern him as an individual, and being and 
doing right as individuals, nations will not go astray 
from just action. 

Man cannot deal in wrongdoing and prosper in 
his lasting, eternal progress, though a short lifetime 
may seem very brilliant in point of ill-gotten worldly 
gains, yet the laws of his life follow him whitherso- 
ever he goeth, and sooner or later the judgment is 
pronounced, from which he can find no escape but 
the full payment of the penalty. Justice may not 
overtake him in this life, but somewhere the divine 
demand comes, and he must answer thereto. 

The histories of all nations have been scenes of 
prosperity and revolution, which must still continue 
to be, until human laws act in harmony with divine, 
and mankind learn to walk in those paths of rectitude 
and honor marked out for them in the laws which 
govern them in common with the universe. 

America struggled hard to give birth to the first 
child of liberty, but the descendants of those noble 
and patriotic grandsires, who waded through rivers 
of blood, and battled with and surmounted by almost 



32 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

superhuman efforts mighty obstacles, that we might 
be free, have forgotten, in our selfish greed after 
worldly gains, the principles of right to a very great 
extent, and the consequence is, that to-day, America' 
is again in the agonies of travail to give birth to the 
second child of freedom, upon whose broad Atlantean 
shoulders is to be borne the emblazoned emblem of 
truth and liberty to the world. The first struggle 
was principle warring with outward oppression ; to- 
day it is principle warring with internal wrong, with 
slaveocracy in its many forms, aristocracy, monopoly, 
and the hydra-headed monster of evil. 

Reforms should commence with marriage, the cradle, 
and in early life. Man reared aright from his begin- 
ning, and he remains so. It is useless to be striking at 
effects while causes remain untouched. 

We cannot expect the ballot-box to decide with 
justice, while those, many of them, who cast the votes, 
know nothing of the first principles of their own 
beings, and consequently nothing of the principles of 
divine freedfci and right. Long prior to a man's 
public life, lies the training which fits him for it. In 
the maternal womb begins his being, and as that 
beginning is in accordance with the divine laws of 
procreation, so will be the man, shaped much by 
training and circumstances in the early years of life. 
Fundamental to his existence and after career lie the 
laws of life, and in their study and observance is to be 
found the key to all reform. Not in rituals, not in 
prevailing customs and beliefs, not in the past with its 
superstitious and barbaric notions, but in the living 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 33 

present is the growing reason of man to find the in- 
struments for his use, and instructions for his guidance. 
No age has been so rife with spiritual knowledge, 
light, and insight as this, and therefore no age with 
what has been, can serve to guide us of the nineteenth 
century. We are farther progressed upon the great 
sea of time than any who have gone before, and from 
the times in which we live must draw the means to 
meet every emergency of our lives ; must " take time 
by the forelock," and make ourselves masters of our 
own conditions. Times of prosperity develop the 
commercial resources of a country ; times of war its 
mental capacities. 

Put at the helm of the " ship of state " men of right 
knowledge and principles, to execute just laws, and 
she will sail on smooth seas of peace and prosperity. 

Long prior to man's appearance the divine edict 
went forth, and it must be heeded ; the cause of hu- 
manity, freedom, love, justice, and truth demand its 
observance. 



CHAPTEK III. 

SOCIAL SLAVERY. 



Prior to every thing physical is the spiritual, for 
the spirit is the cause of material existence ; in other 
words, the principle of life, or God, was before the 
physical world had being. The infinite reared the 
finite, that is, the first great cause operated and worlds 
2* 



34: INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

and a universe were born. The terms infinite ana 
finite are comparative terms, and here used as such ; 
but strictly speaking, every thing is ^finite, and finite 
pertains to those things and forms of being, like man's 
physical form, which rapidly change, suffering, at the 
option of infinite law, rapid and frequent metamor- 
phoses. The finite to us is the tangible world about 
us, which we can grasp, measure, weigh, and thus 
comprehend ; the infinite, that which is unfathomable 
by man of the creation, arriving at ultimate causes. 
The world in which we live, and which is to us tangi- 
ble, and we ourselves, are but parts of the infinite, all 
having life breathed into them by the infinite, eternal, 
life-giving principle called God by us, and by different 
nations different names. Matter, merely as such, has 
no life without spirit, or the tangible, immediate ma- 
terial is inseparably allied to the infinite, dependent 
wholly thereupon. Of all creation, God is the cause, 
God is spirit, spirit is the life ; consequently, as the 
spirit is, so is the condition of the material it gives 
life or being to ; therefore, in understanding the spir- 
itual lies the power to properly control the physical. 
Spirit is the cause, matter the effect, intimately, insep- 
arably, and eternally blended. Man is not an excep- 
tion to the general laws of birth, growth and life, as 
seen in the physical world about him ; the same laws 
that pervade the universe, pervade also and control 
him, and in their study lies his highest good, for he 
can no better seek to know the proper uses and pur- 
poses of his being, than by learning the causes which 
continually operate to control him ; going to the foun- 



SOCIAL SLAVERT. 35 

tain source, and tracing the cause and effect of Ms 
existence, all the way up from the beginning to full 
manhood, then stands he forth before the world a 
man of knowledge, power and wisdom, because know- 
ing self. He understands himself according to the 
higher principles of his nature, and is ever prepared 
to act under all circumstances, readily, justly, and 
'wisely, for he knows the right and follows therein ; he 
has accomplished the first duty and study of his life, 
in learning the right use of self. Such is truly an 
educated man, though he may never have seen the 
inside of a school-house or college ; may not have read 
Virgil, Butler, or any of the great authors, yet be a 
scholar, scholastic in the knowledge of his own powers 
of life and the laws of nature / know why he lives, 
and how to live to make his life the success it was 
given him to make. 

What is man, that he should so puff himself up with 
great pretension ? He cannot outrun nature, and the 
insects that crawl beneath his feet are wiser than he. 
The little ant and busy bee build with more of beauty, 
art, and utility than man, and live in fulfilment of 
their mission in life, under the guidance of native in- 
stinct, better than does man with all his mighty bom- 
bast, and pretended skill and knowledge ; yet is man 
infinitely, almost, the higher development; but, not- 
withstanding his great superiority of growth and pow- 
er, he cannot be wiser than the insect, and in no way 
its equal in purity and wisdom, save by giving as strict 
allegiance to the laws of his nature as does the insect. 

All temporal forms have a beginning ; so man sprang 



36 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

into life, so far as his mundane existence is concerned, 
in a very low state of development, and for many 
ages, through the slow, consecutive processes of natural 
unfoldment, has been gradually rising in the scale of 
growth, worth, intellect, and God-like powers, until to- 
day we find him going through the process of devel- 
oping his reason and intellectuo-spiritual faculties. 
"What his past has been is very easy to discern ; for 
tracing the laws of life, by means of the growing rea- 
son, we see that his beginning must, according to all 
the analogies of nature, have been very crude, and the 
first outburst of life-power but one grade above the 
brute. His knowledge, like his development, was 
then more of the brute instinct than of reflection, — a 
somewhat refined animal instinct. Thus, undoubtedly, 
for long eras was man growing, subject to the control 
of his instinct, which led him in purer paths of life 
than at a far more advanced period of growth, when 
the enlarged intellect became too strong to be wholly 
governed oy instinct, and still not sufficiently devel- 
oped to come under the control of reason. Thus we 
trace man from the first stage of human existence into 
the second, which seems to have been the age of semi- 
human barbarity, when the animal instincts were 
no longer able to wholly control the increased percep 
tions, nor the intellectual faculties sufficiently enlarged 
to control the animal propensities, consequently the 
strife between the two, instinct and intellect, has been 
manifest in many cruel barbarities of ages long prior 
to history, undoubtedly, and within the scope, also, of 
historic recollection. 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 37 

The divine injunction has been obeyed, however, 
as an unavoidable fatality, and the progress of the 
human race been steadily onward, toward higher de- 
velopment, loftier aims, and grander results. Divine 
justice has stood at the helm, and divine plans been 
carried forward despite the wayward and angry ten- 
dencies of undeveloped man — of man in his transi- 
tional state between the brute and human — and 
although long ages have doubtless rolled past, yet is 
man but just emerging from his animal tendencies 
upon planes of high moral and intellectuo-spiritual 
advancement. 

For generations past has man been bursting the 
bonds of fettered ignorance, and coming slowly upon 
those planes of development where intellect, pure 
metaphysical intellect, is beginning to lead him in the 
paths of his nature — in paths of knowledge and scien- 
tific investigation, which unfold to his enlarging per- 
ceptions something of the causes of his existence, and 
teach him the laws of his life ; yet, through how much 
superstition and error he has struggled to arrive at 
his present growth, the histories of the past, and the 
mockeries of the present under the garb of religion, 
can best tell. It is my mission to introduce new 
thoughts, and not to rake among the ruins of the past 
for ideas, therefore I shall leave my readers to make 
research and learn for themselves, what they may 
wish to know of what has been. I had much rather 
be engaged in studying the living present and gaining 
revelations therefrom. The past, as compared with 
the future, is but little in the eternity of time, through- 



38 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

out whose endless ages endure all things, and man 
cannot grow rapidly while engaged in revoking or 
re-enacting the scenes of the past in memory. What 
has gone into the oblivion to which time consigns all 
things, should there be left as having served its pur- 
pose, and gone forever from view as it was. The order 
of life is chmige ; and motion incessant is revolving 
and renewing the affairs of the world in ever increas- 
ing and progressive action ; as fast as things temporal 
serve the purposes for which they were created, so 
fast do they pass, or change away, to leave room for 
new developments in their stead. Man stands at the 
climax of creation, and it is for him to keep pace with 
the divine order of existence, and consequently he 
should not be dozing over the scenes and superstitions 
of the past; time is too precious to be thus wasted, 
nor his allotment of it any too long for his perfection, 
though all be well applied. So long as he is the van- 
guard, so to speak, in the processes of development 
which all nature is gradually undergoing in its infinite 
fatality, he should keep even pace not only with the 
changes of time, but in his understanding anticipate 
them, and be ever ready to meet with the inception of 
more light and truth ; the windows of his soul should 
ever be open to the divine influx of knowledge, that 
he may with wisdom execute every design of his cre- 
ation. In this way would man become a free being, 
dependent only upon the laws of reciprocal unity, and 
ever ready to act according to the higher intuitions of 
his expanding nature. Out of himself would come 
forth the light to guide him aright, and not out of the 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 39 

misconceptions of a sleepy world, sleeping amid the 
bigotry and superstition of bygone ages, not daring 
to look ahead of the time worn and stale doctrines of 
man-made creeds and customs. The laws of our beings 
should be the creeds of our lives, and their observance 
constitute our highest duties and purest worship. 

Human mentality was not made to be slave bound 
to worldly forms ; every law of life disproves it, yet 
as we look abroad into the world and note the varied 
conditions of societies bound up in the observance of 
popular, wholly worldly ceremonies, as meaningless 
as shallow, not daring to step outside of the customary 
routine, convinces us how really people are slaves to 
social customs, while few, indeed, of those who have 
any higher appreciation of right, dare to live up to 
their better judgment for fear of the frowns of their 
neighbors — slaves to the popular opinion — nor dare to 
exercise life in accordance with the fullest capacity of 
reason — moral cowards ! Mind makes the man what 
he is, and if that is not allowed its full exercise, its 
full scope of action, small indeed becomes its capacity 
to grasp after and understand any thing outside of its 
usual routine of thinking ; it becomes hemmed in by 
the continual observance of old staid notions, to the 
exclusion of progressive ideas, and the acquirement 
of a riper knowledge of its own powers. Man has 
now arrived at that stage of development, when the 
mind will not much longer submit to the shackles of 
old superstition, imposed by clerical authority, for the 
bud of human growth is bursting the shell which has 
so long encased it, and beginning to take a broader 



4:0 INTELLECTUAL FKEEDOM. 

and deeper survey of the affairs of life. The increased 
perceptions are piercing beneath the surface of a false 
society, crusted over by a fabulous theology. It is 
the age of philosophy, and demonstration takes the 
place of blind belief; proof is needed to satisfy the 
hungerings of the restless spirit, and faith and outside 
show will not much longer hold noble man in " du- 
rance vile," for there is an eternal spark within him, 
which is too much in sympathy with the progressive 
designs of the infinite, to long be held in slavish stu- 
pidity to a worldly power, which is as false to every 
beautiful principle of human existence as is hell to 
heaven ; for where else but to hell would this same 
worldly power damn you, if you but assail its strong- 
hold, or set reason upon its track ? 

Man is a cosmos ; in him all the attributes of the 
world from which he is formed are found, and he ul- 
timately must be as free as the eternal power formed 
him. All the rituals and false ceremonies of the social 
world must soon give way to man's growing reason 
necessarily, for in proportion to the enlargement of 
the intellectual faculties, so will be the perceptions, 
enabling him to look deeper and deeper into the laws 
of his own existence, unraveling gradually the science 
of truly and rightly living, and, as a self-adjusting law, 
work out the axiom of his creation. 

In each human being naturally dwell all the attri- 
butes of life, and by his or her cultivation are they to 
be brought forth in good and wise action. The re- 
sponsibility of being all that was designed in our 
creation rests, in a great measure, with each one ; for 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 41 

the principles of life indwell in every faculty of our 
organisms, like the germ principle in the seed, and 
it remains for us to outgrow them by the right and 
proper pruning and care, so that for all the lack there 
is in our developments we are to blame, since the 
forces of nature are ever striving to expand into full- 
ness. 

Were it not for so much social slavery, the bondage 
of mind unto mind, there would be very much more 
general advancement and enlightenment in the world. 
The mind, I have said, makes the man, consequently 
unless it is left free to contemplate, to the full extent 
of its capacity, the science and beauty of nature, thus 
expanding and educating the brain, it will not grow 
full and strong, and its development remains imper- 
fect, as its actions will show. Wisdom is the boon of 
life which all crave and admire, but wisdom is not 
the product of a stinted mind — a restricted intellect. 
Freedom is the magic that gives to all action a for- 
ward impetus, and develops the deep hidden resources 
of the human soul. Free action, free thinking and 
free speech are growth j but overcome, held in slavery, 
by the fear of popular disapprobation, by moral 
cowardice, what are the faculties of the mind good 
for ? Man might as well hinge himself upon some 
mechanical steam-power and thus go through the 
world, so far as real growth and worth are concerned. 
Most people are engaged in talking other people's 
thoughts, using other's brains and thus chiming in 
with the common herd. 

Every man has a brain of his own, and that brain 



42 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

is only highly useful by the constant rubbing and pol- 
ishing of thinking and acting for itself, under all cir- 
cumstances. Brains are worth nothing save as they 
are capable of understanding the science of life, and 
giving demonstrations thereof in speech and action. 
To educate the young brain is to use such keys of 
nature as will wind it up so that it will run of itself \ 
and keep time to its own construction. Minds that 
talk others' minds, and follow in the wake of their 
opinions, are worth nothing. Man owes himself his 
whole attention, giving which his life outflows in ele- 
vated and wise actions, that are ever a benefit to him- 
self and his fellow-men. He has no responsibility 
save to himself, his fellows, and his God, which is all 
summed up in the strict observance of the laws of his 
being; and as every human being is different in 
organization from every other, it rests with each to 
observe the laws of his or her constitution, regardless 
of the peculiarities and fallacies of the outside world. 
To be a law unto self is clearly the rule of life, that 
is : to study and observe the laws of one's own being, 
inasmuch as one cannot act for another, in the matter 
of growing and cultivating the mentality, ^bringing 
the powers mherent in human nature. The peculi- 
arities of one mind are not those of another, for the 
divine order of creation is not ever rendered monoto- 
nous by an exact repetition ; but the productions of 
nature are as infinite in variety, as the mind is in- 
finite that gives them existence. No two productions 
of man were ever just alike, for the purposes of each 
are fulfilled with each, and needs not a second edition; 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 43 

indeed it would be too near an approach to "old 
fogyisrn" in the infinite, to give forth editions of hu- 
man nature unchanged ; while I believe it would be 
an impossibility from the very laws of creation, which 
are progressive, and must necessarily never produce 
two organized entities exactly the same ; therefore do 
we see the impossibility of generalizing rules of living, 
any farther than strict adherence to the Deifio Prin- 
ples of life. Divine law must necessarily be man's 
order, as individual distinctness is the divine rule, as 
seen in all the phenomena of life. Every manifestation 
of nature speaks an order divine, to which man must 
give due regard since he is a product of the Divine 
Will, subject in every respect to the ruling, origina- 
ting power; though man, being the highest intelligent 
product of creative wisdom, has therefore the strong- 
est volition, and to some extent may transgress the 
laws of life, as he most certainly does too often, but 
always to the injury of himself, and not the law. As 
the growing intellectual faculties expand into greater 
fulness, giving the perceptive organs deeper insight 
into the affairs of life, man must come under the 
guidance of reason, which is his most Godlike attri- 
bute — the little divinity placed within him to rule his 
organism in accordance or harmony with the plans 
of the infinite, so soon as the intellect perceives those 
plans. It is said " God's ways are not man's ways," 
which I do not believe. God's ways must necessarily 
be man's ways, since man can have no ways but by 
and through the laws of his creation, though man 
may and does try to plan and act for himself hide- 



44 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

pendently of any knowledge of a higher power, but only 
in proportion as his plans are in accordance with the 
infinite does he really succeed. Every seeming 
worldly success is not really such, for upon maternal 
things alone, has not God placed the highest worth ; 
material being only the clay, so to speak, which the 
spiritual moulds at will, into vessels and instruments 
to serve, for a time, the object for which they are 
created, but as such, that is vessels and instruments, 
they do not remain eternally cognizable, and there- 
fore are not to be eternally relied upon. Material 
things undergo continual metamorphoses at the option 
of the spiritual. Man is only a vessel, so far as his 
physical existence is concerned, to be used for a time 
by the indwelling spirit, serving the object of his 
creation, and that object the tf^wroughting of this 
indwelling intelligence into truthful and useful 
action, which can only be done by the powers of life 
enveloped in its own nature. The indwelling life 
principle of Mr. A. cannot develop the inherent ener- 
gies of Mr. B.'s organism, or make his vessel, or ma- 
chinery fulfil the object of its creation, and "vice 
versa ;" but the powers of each are to be outwronght 
by each separate from the other, or, at least, only 
aided by the mutual relations they may sustain to- 
wards each other. Like the seed that contains the 
germ of life for the future plant, and can only be 
developed into the kind of plant for which its germ 
is designed, so man must learn to look upon himself, 
and develop what is within him, rather than be try 
ing to fill himself with what is c>w£side — the rubbish 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 45 

of other people's thoughts. The mstufiing process is 
not substantial; grander, sublimer depths of man's 
interior nature must be explored and brought out, to 
the best good of self and the admiration of the world, 
to form an enduring basis. The social customs and 
forms, that now breed so much of slavery of mind 
and opinion, are soon to be abolished, for man begins 
to see himself as he really is, and to rightly prune and 
culture that self upon its own just merits — to develop 
the nature within, with a view to something more 
permanent than is now afforded by the superficial, 
gewgaw trappings of an artificial society- — superficial 
in education, thought, reading, dressing, and action. 

I have endeavored to set forth, thus far, the divine 
principles of life as applied to human existence ; and 
having stated my views of the designs and conditions 
of man's creation, I shall next endeavor to show how 
well the social world is living out the divine object of 
human life, to do which I must necessarily look into 
the condition of society around me ; arid, as I gaze and 
peer with deeply scrutinizing perceptions into the so- 
cial elements, many are the families I behold who bow 
industriously to the money god, making themselves 
slaves to labor, that they may be counted among the 
votaries of .fashion ; fashion as established not by real 
worth and upon truth, but the fashion of wealth, which 
apes at the aristocracies of monarchical Europe; posi- 
tions reared with money as their basis, a basis founded 
upon the ill-gotten millions of the so-called rich, for 
riches are ill gotten, that do not compensate the la- 
borer according to just, reciprocal laws. Thus the 



46 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

conditions of actual servitude to the mammoth goddess 
of dress and fashion, are very various, showing a peo- 
ple actually worshipping mammon to the degree of 
real physical and mental slavery and imbecility. 
Great riches are the result of avarice and pure selfish- 
ness, that selfishness which monopolizes the common 
wealth of a country and starves the poor ! for just in 
proportion as the few become extremely rich, do the 
masses become poverty-stricken. The wealth of a 
country is so much, which the population of that coun- 
try make, and it is mostly made by the labor of the 
poor, while the few, who happen to have the most 
brains and the least conscience, and the clearest in- 
sight into affairs, make the light they possess the 
means for grinding out of the poor's labor princely 
fortunes. Such I hold to be not in accordance with 
divine teaching, but the result of pure animal selfish- 
ness. 

All human beings are the children of one supreme 
power, and the world is given them to grow from, 
subsist upon, and enjoy, and is the common property 
of all, which all could and would have plenty of, if it 
were not for the extreme selfishness of mankind. 
Were there no such thing as selfishness any farther 
than to supply the natural needs of the body, there 
would be no vast accumulation of fortunes, and con- 
sequently every one would have enough to render 
them free and happy, and not be obliged to wear life 
out in enslaving drudgery to compete with a greedy 
world. 

There is no good reason why mankind should not 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 47 

all be in easy, happy circumstances, and have plenty 
of time for self -culture ; but as the conditions of hu- 
manity are to-day, money is the controlling power, the 
great god, the sublime aim of a people calling them- 
selves civilized and enlightened. Ay ! enlightened 
in every thing save the pure truths of life and right 
use of self. 

The American people bow in humble submission to 
the behests of mammon, sacrificing their highest and 
holiest principles at the altar of the almighty dollar, 
because, forsooth, the popular custom is wealth and 
fashion, which mean, when put in proper language, 
sm and folly. 

This is where we stand to-day ; the more developed 
of us, those whom the circumstances of time have 
smiled upon most favorable, are giving loose rein to 
the selfish propensities, grasping, monopolizing, and 
using the riches of the land for our own lofty worldly 
aggrandizement and power, making slaves of the 
masses, and ourselves slaves to a foolish pride, slaves 
to a material power, which brings luxury and dissipa- 
tion to the body, and long, lasting curses to the soul. 
Upon this wealth basis is the social code reared and 
its institutions founded, and how well the devotees of 
fashion are submitting to the slavery imposed by mam- 
mon, the struggles and throes, discontents and inhar- 
monies which pervade societies, and the consequent 
laws and prisons, asylums and poor-houses, sustained 
in their midst, will best tell. 

With our present state of society, man becomes a 
constant slave to almost superhuman toil to meet the 



48 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

demands, which the expenses of supporting a family 
in style make upon him, and then must often sacrifice 
principle and honor to compete with the greedy world 
about him for gain. So long as the standard of worth 
is wealth, every manner of living must correspond. 

With a land overflowing, in times of peace, with 
plenty of every thing for man's material wants, and 
adorned with the beautiful for the elevation and enli- 
vening of his soul, yet are the beauties and grandeurs 
of nature, with their teachings and exhilarating in- 
fluences, little cared for by man in his low aims. And 
through the power of wealth in the hands of the few, 
provisions range, considering their plenty, at very high 
prices, so that the poor find starvation at times actually 
staring them in the face! Oh, in such a land as 
America, with a people calling themselves free, that 
there should be such a condition as poor people ! 

Sending millions and millions of dollars' worth of 
our country's products every year to foreign ports, 
taking in exchange gaudy foreign manufactures where- 
with to deck and adorn richly the body, while there 
are poor at home actually starving ! 

Oh, American People ! what must be the sins to 
atone for when time shall have stricken off the mortal 
coil, and with it the shackles of ignorance and super- 
stition, and you are brought before that eternal tribu- 
nal of stern justice, which all must soon face ! 

It is time strong language was used — truth is 
always strong — in speaking of the evils of the present 
time, which underlie the business and social world, 
for, as a people, we are fast going into physical and 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 49 

moral degeneracy. The houses of refuge, prisons, 
insane retreats, and dens of ill fame, speak more 
against our manner of living, than the pen can do ; 
for the requirements of the social world, with its 
extravagance, power, artificialities, and hypocrisies, 
drive very many, through the commitment of penal 
offences and otherwise, into these very places, as the 
only hiding-places from the scorn and persecutions of 
an uncharitable, Christian (!) state of society. 

Christ is looked to as an example of purity, charity, 
and right worthy our highest imitations, but, alas ! 
only looked to, not imitated, and he had not where to 
lay his head that he could call his own ; no princely 
palace in which to dwell in high pomp and dignity, 
and from which to condescend to give occasionally 
a few paltry coppers to the poor, but ever sought the 
lowly, to give them words of cheer and instruction, 
making himself as one of them., and overthrowing the 
tables of the money-changers in the temple, a rebuke 
against such proceedings, which might well be re- 
peated at the present time in America. Yet this 
same act of Jesus is preached upon often from the 
sacred (!) desk to listening thousands, but never acted 
upon, save it be by a solitary individual or two. Can 
we find any better example than that which Christ 
set us ? if not, why not live it out in our e very-day 
affairs ? Simply because our social systems are found- 
ed upon a wrong basis, — a wealth basis instead of 
principle; and it requires that a man should be some- 
what avaricious, however repugnant it may be to his 
better sense, to live with a grasping, selfish world, 
3 



50 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

where even the wealthy often cheat and defraud the 
starving poor for a paltry dollar or two, as I have 
often known. Such things, and conditions of living 
must be eradicated, for there is a power over that of 
man's whose ways are those of principle and justice, 
and the inception of whose truths must eventually 
emancipate the world from all wrongs, placing hu- 
manity upon planes of charitable brotherhood. 

I know well, that reforms cannot be instantaneous,' 
and that the prevailing customs of a time oblige many 
to resort to expediencies of business dishonorable, 
rather suffer the stings of pride or starve, but I know, 
too, that the inevitable tendency of the higher laws is 
towards man's enlightenment and true civilization ; 
therefore does it become my duty to plant some of 
the seeds of reform, that they may be taking root for 
future, if not present good. 

The principles of divine justice are the " leaven in 
the meal," which must eventually leaven the whole 
human family, for I see it is rapidly working, and 
through those whose perceptions are deepest and clear- 
est must these principles be evolved to the under- 
standing of the multitude. ' The bonds of ignorance 
which now rivet the social world with the manacles 
of false pride and error, must be severed, and the in- 
ception of light and truth, make all hearts glad and 
free. The wrongs of society must gradually be 
emancipated, as now the turmoil and strife of a nation 
in civil conflict is surely doing. Reforms come with 
and without wars, but the greatest reformation occa- 
sioned by any war is now being enacted upon our own 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 51 

continent; America pours out her blood freely to 
wash away the dark sins of a nation, deep rooted and 
wide spread throughout her fair land. The South has 
crimsoned her hands and stained her honor with the 
ominous gore of Africa's sons and daughters for 
nearly a century, and the North, calling herself free 
has nursed around her hearthstones and in her public 
sanctuaries, bigoted and aristocratic notions in imita- 
tion of monarchical Europe, and run mad over her 
easily-gotten gains. The causes of war have been 
aggravated and the reformation will be great. The 
rotten institutions of both sections must crumble be- 
fore the invading monarch of stern justice, and the 
social fabric be reared upon Principle instead of 
wealth. 

Gold, as a medium of business is valuable, but 
placed upon its right basis, is of no more value than 
the things it buys — is a mere metal, and worship- 
ped, leads the mind down rather than up — having 
no more intrinsic worth than other metals ; and in 
proportion as it is set up as a god, and bowed unto, 
just in that ratio do people become idolaters and 
unprincipled rogues, for its very worship involves the 
sacrifice of principle. Gold, given its just value, as 
compared with the material world becomes plenty, 
and every thing of daily need, cheap. It is the money- 
changers of our own time, and speculators, who give 
such an undue value to it, by their dishonest and self- 
ish graspings. Such things are on a par with high- 
way robbery, and such men, viewed in the light of 
principle, no better than robbers, for they steal and 



52 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

hoard away the common riches of the country, to an 
extent that does not naturally belong to them, and, 
by so doing, literally defraud many of their just 
share. Such men infest every community, and are 
the curses which bereave a nation's people, causing 
many poor, miserable, half-starved paupers in the 
land. If the riches of the country were not thus 
hoarded away into coffers, by a set of vampires, and 
moneyed bloodsuckers, there would be a great plenty 
for all, and every man be rich. 

The social world is in worse thraldom to wealth and 
fashion to-day, than is the African with the chains of 
physical servitude clanking upon his feet. This great 
love of money is the giant evil that stalks in so many 
different shapes over our beautiful land, and blights 
with its foul touch so many happy homes and hearts. 
That there is truth in the assertions I make, every 
one who has any perception whatever must know ; 
while those who have been all their lives slaves to sur- 
rounding circumstances, will feel the force of my re- 
marks, and concede them true, from a knowledge which 
is practical within themselves. What I write for is, to 
see society placed upon its right basis, to see principles, 
not dollars, its code of honor ; I would see every one 
free, rich, and happy, and none bowed down in abject 
poverty, because the riches that should in part belong 
to them, are stolen away by the few ; I would see man 
in his proper sphere in life, fulfilling the divinely im- 
posed duty of being an honest, noble and aspiring 
man, strong in the principles and truths of a pure 
manhood ; I would see laws enacted and enforced to 



SOCIAL SLAVERY. 53 

do away with the heinous crimes of money specula- 
tions, and the riches of the land properly distributed, 
and for this reason do I lend my feeble voice and pen 
in humanity's cause. Mankind have been long enough 
slaves to a false system of living ; the code social has 
imposed its restraints, set its bounds, and retarded 
man's progress to a very great extent ; but now that 
he is getting to be a reasonable and highly intellectual 
being, he must assume the rights vouchsafed to him 
in his creation, and stand forth a free man, nor longer 
be a slave to public opinion, a slave to worldly pride, 
a slave to wealth, a slave to the passions and low ani- 
mal propensities. He should aspire to something 
more noble, pure, and elevated. 

Man must open his understanding to the principles 
of life, and their right application in matters of living, 
if he would emancipate himself from the many ills 
and wrongs that now burden and oppress him. The 
way is clearly open, the good is before him, if he can 
but assume moral courage enough to make the at- 
tempt, but whether he make it or not, his life ever 
stands before him, from which he cannot flee, and the 
deep-toned silence of the past stands sentinel over all 
his acts, ready to unbury them of the accumulated 
rubbish and filth of time, when he shall have shaken 
off the mortal coil, and hand them all over to him in 
eternity. What he does, and what he is, that will he 
see, and so will he be, when he passes into that clime 
where he will be constantly under the surveillance of 
a power more mighty than man, and whose commands 
he cannot evade. 



54 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 



CHAPTER IT. 

RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 

I come now to the consideration of a most important 
topic, religion ; one which is vital to the interests of all, 
inasmuch as it concerns the eternal as well as temporal 
welfare of mankind ; is most nearly allied to the prin- 
ciples of human existence, and teaches the best man- 
ner of temporal living to the end that the immortal 
may be best attained. It is not only the most vital, 
but the deepest rooted among human institutions, ex- 
erting a power which moulds and* makes, to a very 
great extent, the social elements of the civilized world ; 
therefore is it one which needs our most careful and 
candid investigation. Time here, we are told, is but 
the probationary existence of man, and popular religion 
professes to teach the best manner of using that time 
to the attainment of an eternal and bright inheritance 
in celestial abodes. How well it does so I purpose to 
investigate. 

Before proceeding farther it is necessary to define 
the term true religion, that my readers may get some 
definite idea of the subject under consideration. I do 
not propose, however, to go into any learned disserta- 
tions of past history and far-fetched quotations, or, in 
other words, shall not resort to the mythologies and 
vague notions of the past to prove any thing, preferring 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 55 

to deal with living matter and principles, and scien- 
tific analysis, and through philosophic research set 
forth my position and define my terms. What igno- 
rant bygone ages have thought respecting religion is 
no evidence to us of the nineteenth century ; our in- 
vestigations must be by our own perceptions, because 
the law and order of creation is progress, as most em- 
phatically written with the finger of time upon all 
things, and therefore what has been is no proof what- 
ever of what is or will be. The past had of knowl- 
edge and wisdom sufficient for its development, and 
it is as absurd to think that the enlightenment of the 
people of long gone ages is any guide for us to follow, 
as it would be to say there has been no progress. 
Either there has been progress made or there has not, 
and consequently the natural order of creation is pro- 
gression or it is not. And who that has ordinary in- 
tellect and good sense can doubt for a moment which 
it is, for all can see and know that the affairs of life 
about them are ever changing, and new and improved 
things are constantly occurring in their midst, speak- 
ing an argument in favor of progression stronger than 
all the theories ever spun. 

In my former chapters I have dwelt somewhat upon 
the laws of life as the principles of a divine order and 
intelligence, overruling and mruling all the creations 
of the world, to which man constitutes no exception. 
The same laws that hold good in respect to a world 
and the various ingredients therein, hold good also to 
him, for he is one of the ingredients of matter physi- 
cally, and of spirit mentally, or immortally; therefore 



56 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

is the school from which he must draw his truthful 
lessons of life wrapped up within the nature from 
whence he came, and to which he belongs. 

The immortal principles of life from which he had 
being, compose the spiritual power, the intelligence, 
that compiles the body and resides therein for a time, 
and then takes its immortal flight to realms eternal, 
not far beyond the shores of time, but lingering upon 
its boundaries, still not removed from its precincts, for 
the dividing line between time and eternity is not 
capable of definition, save as seen in the separation of 
the spirit from the body, — the immortal from the mor- 
tal. Time and eternity continually join hands, and 
the step from the finite to the infinite but one. From 
this state of existence to the next, who shall calculate 
the distance or give bounds to the infinite? Does not 
earth swim in the ether blue, imbibing its spiritual 
life and light therefrom? Are not the God-given 
principles of life as much present here as in worlds 
unknown ? Who is God, and whence comes * life ? 
Resides there an infinite Godhead in the unknown 
somewhere, from whose inexhaustible fountain are 
supplied all worlds with life? And who shall tell 
where is that fountain, that residence of life, love, and 
wisdom eternal? Certainly not man, for the little 
world in which he lives is beyond his full comprehen- 
sion. And shall he fathom Deity ? Oh, foolish and 
arrogant man ! to presume to delve to Deific centres 
and bring to light the hidden mysteries of the eternal ; 
to print, reprint, translate, time and again, the edict 
of an infinite intelligence to a world's people, w T hile 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 57 

yet thine own centre of being is not explored, and the 
deep hidden life-powers of your own existence remain 
undeveloped ! Foolish art thou, oh, man ! in your 
ignorance, who would not presume to penetrate the 
divine cause of life, if but the knowledge of little self 
were more complete, for then would thy increased 
wisdom teach thee better. Man must deal with the 
known or surrounding elements of life before he can 
fathom to any extent the unknown. The science of 
his own existence must first be learned, and the reve- 
lations of an ever- revealing intelligent life-force in 
nature be his instructor. He lives in a growing, 
changing world, and the progress of time unravels the 
beautiful order and science of divine control to his 
enlarging perceptions continually. 

Life is internal, life is spiritual, and ever developing 
from within outward ; is a principle of eternal origin 
and eternal endurance. The great fund that consti- 
tutes immensity — so far as man's feeble perceptions 
go — and from which all material things receive vitality, 
the immeasurable ether, through whose spiritual depths 
traverse, in infinite order and harmony, myriads of 
worlds, orbs, suns, and comets, is the God we fable ; an 
invisible, omnipresent, all- wise, all-intelligent, life-giv- 
ing something, without which nothing lives, — a dual 
power embodying all the attributes of creation, call it 
air, vapor, gas, material or non-material, as you please, 
it still remains the fountain of life, life itself, temporal 
and eternal. A mysterious, indefinable, self-sustain- 
ing, self-adjusting combination of life powers, where 
whose first, great, originating fountain-head is man 
3* 



58 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

knows not. So far does human language serve me in 
expressing my ideas of God, of life, love, light, knowl- 
edge, wisdom, and power, and the nearest to any thing 
definite in expression I can arrive at, is in conceiving 
two powers, a positive and negative, keeping ever an 
equilibrium in their blendings, which seems very rea- 
sonable, since we cannot deal with and comprehend 
matter without discovering there to be always two 
conditions, magnetic and electric, or, in animate exist- 
ence, male and female ; and thus w T e can conceive of 
nothing which has not two extremes, two sides, ends, 
two conditions; therefore shall I call the Deiflc 
Power magnetism and electricity; magnetism being 
the positive and electricity the negative, one heat, the 
other cold ; one, one extreme, and the other, the op- 
posite extreme, in whose beautiful mean of blending 
is possessed all the attributes of the universe. 

I do not mean to be understood to say, that there 
are two distinct elements of life, standing alone, or 
separate, for such is not the case ; the forces of life, 
of nature, of God are ever blended and blending, so 
that what is positive to one condition is negative to 
another, and vice versa • and thus there is an eternal 
or infinite condition of developments, nothing being 
so positive that it is not negative still to a greater, 
and nothing so negative that it does not remain posi- 
tive still to something lesser, and so is the chain of 
life complete — all conditions blended, all blending 
constantly, changing, obeying the reciprocal laws, and 
forming the great, eternal circle of creation. 

Seemingly, man is dust and to dust returns, but 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 59 

spiritually the spark that lights up his soul and lends 
to the inner man immortality ', is a spiritual atom 
from the infinitude of space, in the ethereal depths of 
which is his infinite home, where, as a spirit identity, 
embodying intelligence, he resides, subject to the 
ever increasing growth and progressive changes inci- 
dent to the Eternal. 

Man's life, then, is in rapport with the divine, sub- 
ject to divine laws, which work in, through, and over 
him continually, to expand, grow, and complete his 
development constantly towards the infinite. Life 
with him is a principle, a spark from the great fount 
of the immortal, to ever remain among the never- 
dying vital elements, and not a myth, a bauble to be 
looked at superficially, educated superficially, and 
superficially adorned for a few fleeting years, and at 
last be blown away into annihilation by the autumn 
winds of a short, superstitious, superficial existence. 
No ! Man always existed as a principle in the ele- 
ments of creation, and his birth into earth-life but the 
identifying of that principle into the individual, and 
passing through a season of growth and individualized 
refinement, preparatory to the borning again into 
spirit reality. He is ever possessed of immortality 
and the journey through earth-life but the shaping 
into identified development, possessed of an intelli- 
gence nearest allied unto the infinite. He is not of 
miraculous birth any more than all creation, but, in 
the natural order of divine control, comes as the 
climax of creative wisdom, in whom is embodied the 
highest intelligence of individualized Deific life 



60 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

"power. Man is a microscopic atom compared with 
immensity, and yet a cosmos, combining in his organ- 
ism all the principles of life beneath him, because 
standing at the summit of progressive order, the 
result of all the evolutions and changes of the life 
powers prior to him. 

Seeing man in his true light and relations to the 
world of life about him, is to see his true character, 
position, and destiny : therefore the understanding of 
his right culture is easy. We see that 'to live in 
accordance with the divine principles of his being is 
clearly his duty to himself and his God, that he may 
fulfil well the object Of his creation, and thus arise to 
the acme of human wisdom, a highly intelligent, 
honest, moral, and religious being. He springs from 
the divine fountain, and to the divine power only, 
through the laws of his being does he owe allegiance, 
giving which he fulfils the reciprocal relations be- 
tween himself and his fellow-men ; therefore do I de- 
fine true religion to be true living, and honest work 
true worship. 

Action is the watchword of life, and humility, 
charity and love its attendants. True knowledge is 
real wisdom, and that knowledge only is true which 
teaches the science of life, and consequently true liv- 
ing. The spiritual lies ever back of, or within the 
physical, and is the motive power to action that 
evolves from chaos — undeveloped — order, harmony, 
and life progressive ; consequently the study of spirit- 
ual science gives that knowledge and wisdom to 
man which is eternal. It is this study that con- 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 61 

stitutes true religious teaching, and applying which 
to his practical concerns of life, gives to him the most 
rapid unfoldment as an enlightened and civilized 
human being. Snch study gives the best and highest 
culture to man, for it teaches him truly of the life 
within, of the immortal, and raises him from the low 
animal feelings and selfish tendencies of half devel- 
oped animal man, because it spiritualizes him, and 
creates aspirations which elevate him to the plane of 
advanced, refined manhood. Such study again, and 
spiritual teaching — spiritual because teaching the 
cause and effect of man's existence, and the true ten- 
dency of his advancement, unravelling the mysteries 
of his own being — is effective in enlightening and re- 
forming mankind, simply because a natural and easy 
manner of speaking truth, and giving that light which 
can never be hid " under a bushel," or confined to the 
narrow limits of a creed or ceremony. 
''Truth is the Almighty's weapon with which he brings 
to stern justice all things, and thinkest thou, oh, man ! 
that thou canst escape its penetrating search, and go 
unpunished for your errors and deceits ? Thinkest 
thou the self-adjusting laws of a just God thou canst 
evade ? I tell thee no ; for divine order and harmony 
will not allow that any of the cogs in the multiform 
wheels of time should long be misplaced or missing. 
Every thing receives its proper adjustment sooner or 
later, and man surely finds his proper level. 

Life is change, and constant motion the order of the 
universe; nothing can remain still, for the watch- 
word of the Eternal is forward ! The earth, nor any 



62 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

of the universal bodies remain motionless for an in- 
stant ; but . ceaselessly, sublimely, and eternally do 
they jaunt their endless round, over whose mighty 
movements and grandest results, silence, deep-toned 
and supreme silence, stands sentinel. 

"Were one to stand still for a moment, even, as the 
sun is said to have done at the command of the man 
Joshua, there would instantly be disorder in the 
whole, and the perpetual motion of the universal 
bodies destroyed. There is system, science, order, and 
harmony with the infinite control, and the Deific life 
elements are unceasingly working out the great prob- 
lem of creation, which is too extended for man's full 
comprehension, and yet too minute and ethereal for his 
senses to realize. The physical is tangible to his phys- 
ical senses ; the spiritual is comparatively unexplored 
and uninvestigated. 

By the sciences of life we learn, that there are no 
fixtures in the infinite plans ; that what relates to the 
eternal is eternally in action, therefore the spirit, or 
intelligence of man, being, as we have seen, a spark 
from the infinite fund, an immortal atom of individ- 
ualized Deific life principle, must be ever on the pro- 
gress, ever active in living and obeying the laws of 
its nature / consequently any thing that tends to its 
unchanging routine of action, tends also to interfere 
with and destroy for a time its onward march, and 
therefore its best spiritual advancement, which we see 
cannot be its truest religious ctdture, because religious 
discipline pertains to the control of the physical, 
through the spiritual understanding and enlighten- 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 63 

ment, which spiritual order we have seen to be ever 
active, progressive, and unfolding. Set or fixed 
dogmas and routines do not accomplish this, therefore 
are they not only dead and false to what they profess, 
hut positively injurious by interfering with natural 
law and growth. 

Profession is one of the deceits and falsities of man 
and does not exist among eternal principles. With 
the divine, every thing is action, and with nothing save 
man is there profession ; professing often to do what 
he does not, at least so in the matter of popular reli- 
gion, which professes to teach the spiritual truths of 
man's existence, while it does not do so, but rather 
benights his understanding and retards his growth. 
Professions pass for nothing, and are mere mockeries, 
absurdities, and blasphemies when applied to religion, 
because the higher divine laws of our lives do not 
exact prof ession, but action", right action. It matters 
not what we profess, so long as the action is right and 
just, is in accordance with the demands of our nature. 
Man's spirit is either immortal or it is not ; if immor- 
tal, it must be and is subject to the laws of immor- 
tality, therefore it cannot be rightly cultivated while 
regulated by ideas that are fixed, hj forms that belong 
to superficial things, and made hy man, without regard 
to or knowledge of the infinite laws, but pertain 
wholly to worldly aggrandizement and power, which 
aggrandizement and power promulgate avaricious and 
selfish feelings, and therefore debase the spiritual. 

To study the higher, spiritual, inner laws of being, 
to know self thereby, and act in accordance therewith, 



64 INTELLECTUAL FBEED0M. 

is the right culture and understanding of ourselves. 
Whether the institutions of popular religion do this, I 
shall endeavor to determine. 

If the physical is temporal, and the spiritual eter- 
nal, containing the life and power of the physical, it 
certainly is most desirable and dutiful to cultivate the 
physical in accordance with the laws of the spiritual, 
a good spiritual understanding being endurable riches, 
because giving that which nothing else can give — 
growth in divine order and fulness. 

Worldly things, weighed by spiritual balance, are 
only worth what they serve in forwarding the spiri- 
tual advancement, nothing more ; for the worldly ever 
changes, passing from form to form of different value 
constantly in the eternally changing order of things, 
so that the spirit of man cannot possess the interest of 
the world as material, and only as the circumstances 
of time, surrounding his physical condition, aid on the 
growth of the spiritual. Physical things administer 
to man's material needs, and justly so, but the spirit- 
ual endureth forever, while the physical is soon lost 
to him, therefore is it most highly important for him to 
rightly cultivate and understand the spiritual; so 
that, when he properly uses the physical, that is, with 
a good understanding of the spiritual, he really and 
truly lives. 

True religion, then, teaches simply true living, and 
the homage and worship we are to render in life is 
right action, not meaningless profession ; that action 
which controls the physical in harmony with the 
spiritual. True religion is to worship " in spirit and 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 65 

in truth" that is, to accord all our physical actions 
with spiritual truths. Spirit is life, light, love, knowl- 
edge, wisdom, and power, understanding which places 
us in harmony, or at-one-ment with the vast spirit of 
Deity. 

There is no virtue in profession, for that power 
that' evolves all the universal creation, order, harmony, 
beauty, and sublimity, is action, constant and progres- 
sive action. The world of life in which we live is 
constant toil ; action marks every phenomenon, from 
its own rotary motion down to the meanest growth 
within its nature. The seasons come in regular and 
beautiful succession, bringing their mighty changes ; 
summer fills the land with the beautiful and useful, 
which stern winter, with its frosts and damps, decom- 
poses to fertilize the earth for a new successive growth 
of a still higher development, and thus time marks 
its eternal course with seasons of action, action, never- 
ceasing action, growing and decomposing without 
cessation. Ah ! how sublimely beautiful is the con- 
templation of nature, in her majestic and scientific 
order of action ! "We witness in her no professions, 
but in deep silence does she evolve all her varied 
changes. Silence, here, too, stands sentinel over all 
the mighty efforts, which bring forth from the womb 
of nature the sublime, the beautiful, and the useful. 
Grand and higjily instructive lessons does nature con- 
tinually unfold for man's study and enlightenment. 
The fount of all knowledge and wisdom is in her 
boundless recesses, and in her great laboratory is every 
possible unfoldment of science being wrought out to 



66 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

view, when man's comprehension shall be able to re- 
ceive her teachings. Man receives every thing through 
his reason, can get nothing in any other way ; the 
great chart of nature lies spread out continually before 
him, he lives upon it, it is the book for him to read, 
therefore let him reason and investigate ; every hour 
spent in divining her secrets is better than gold to him, 
because learning that which gold cannot purchase. 

The morality of a people is just in proportion to 
their spiritual enlightenment. The study of self, and 
of nature, learning the laws that govern, gives this 
spiritual knowledge, for in the phenomena of nature 
do we witness the operations of Deific power — God 
speaking to us in every act of the natural world. The 
action of Almighty control is ever visible, making the 
life, shaping and refining the world. 

There needs no farther proof that the order of life 
is action, and not prof ession, therefore all the religious 
teaching in the world, having for its object the prac- 
tice of meaningless professional routine, the constant 
repetition of senseless forms and ceremonies, is false 
to the cause, the furtherance of which it professes to 
exist for, viz. : SPIRITUAL advancement; conse- 
quently every thing connected with church, which is 
founded upon written records of the PAST, tied to 
the UNCHANGrlNG dogmas of a defunct age, with- 
out growth, without life, without progress, without 
philosophy, science, reason, and action, when held up 
in the light of reason, philosophy, and spiritual truth, 
is, upon its face, worldly and unmistakably worldly 
in its tendency, because keeping its devotees in igno- 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 67 

ranee oi the very truths which it professes to teach. 
Edifices of costly structure are set apart for profes- 
sional worship, within whose sacred (?) precincts the 
draperies of the artist, and magnificent ornaments of 
the architect all speak of worldly riches, pride and 
pomp, and upon their highly cushioned seats, their 
folds within, recline the rich world's people with 
placid ease ; while, perhaps, just outside the doors of 
those costly stone houses of God (?), filled with men 
and women ornamented with a suffusion of rich and 
fashionable dress, are poor people, actually hungering 
for bread ! Oh ! looks this like the Christianity Christ 
taught us ? like the humility, benevolence, and char- 
ity of the lowly ISTazarene ? Methinks not ; but on 
the contrary, how different from his example ; how 
different from the great temple of nature, whose archi- 
tect and artist is God, where all may live and worship 
truly according to the divine impulse of their natures, 
" without money and without price." Here are no 
front seats, reserved for the highest bidder in dollars 
and cents ; no robed priestly man to din superstitious 
scares, raked up from the mythologic lore of the dark 
ages, of an awe-striking character, for a little worldly 
power ; no imaginative hell-painted chasms, yawning 
their frightful abysses beneath your feet, but the free 
winds of heaven administer the cooling and refresh- 
ing draught of life and health, the singing birds sing 
sweet songs of freedom and love, the majestic hills, 
waving trees, and babbling brooks in glen and vale, 
tell of a power more grand and sublime than that of 
puny man, and a religion more true, more elevating 



68 INTELLECTUAL FKEEDOM. 

and lasting than the wily impositions from sacred 
desks. There is no slavery, rank, and fashion in true 
religion j it exacts no professions, no dollars, no rou- 
tine duties of forms and man-made creeds, but leaves 
the mind free to penetrate to the inmost depths of its 
own nature, and bring forth the hidden mysteries of 
being ; to fathom and understand the laws of that 
being by means of its own mherent faculties of reason 
and intellect, and follow out the native impulse of a 
growing spirit, true to the laws of its own life. 

God dwells in no temple apart, but is contained in 
the immensity of creation — as much here as there ; 
not cloistered within church walls, not approached by 
certain forms and rituals, and not a respecter of per- 
sons, but is with each and every one in the laws of 
their existence, demanding of them nothing but exact 
obedience to those laws. 

True religion is a thing that cannot be set apart 
from the common interest and best welfare of man- 
kind, for it is a spiritual knowledge, which pertains 
to and concerns one as well as another, is inseparable 
from the duties and destinies of all, a thing of divine 
inheritance, which no man can take away; not gained 
through any beliefs in a vicarious atonement, or the 
infallibility of a written, dead word, but indwells in 
the human soul, a part of life, life its very self, to be 
lived out in just action, and with a right understand- 
ing. How different are the prevailing methods of 
obtaining so-called, religion — making theories, and 
fencing them in ! Spirit, intangible and immortal, 
doled out by a few priests from the sacred (!) desk to 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 69 

the masses, consisting in fine shows, forms, ceremo- 
nies, and routine, tread-mill professional duties, im 
posed only by man ! 

As we have seen in a previous part of the writing, 
that there are ever two powers ruling the creation — a 
positive and negative; so there are two great parties 
ruling the moral world, God and the priests ; but as I 
believe God to be the positive, supreme power, I shall 
take sides with Him, thinking that, as He made the 
world, and also the priests, He best knows how to 
govern it. 

The clergy are men of the world, as much as other 
men, dipping in its scheming affairs quite as much — 
bargaining, selling, and massing money often by spec- 
ulations — travelling with, and being as those of the 
world whom they profess to teach spiritual enlight- 
enment — men among men in all the mad civilization 
of the times, and then, once or twice in seven days, 
aspire hypocritically to teach spiritual science and 
truths ! " Man cannot serve God and mammon /" 
If he is like the world, as it goes, he is not the spirit- 
ual philosopher he should be to truly teach spiritual 
truths ; and if he is the spiritual philosopher, he cannot 
honestly and conscientiously be like the world, partici- 
pating in all its erroneous customs and follies ; there- 
fore I have the right to say a man is hypocritical who 
practises the one and professes the other, for they are 
in very many things at least, diametrically opposed. 
A man cannot be true to the higher principles and 
laws of his nature, and at the same time be like many 
of the prevailing customs of the age, for no one who 



70 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

wishes to see, can but know, that the systems of living, 
of business, of education and religion, are sadly defi- 
cient. Money is the grand object sought, and its ac- 
quirement a matter of surety rather than honesty ', too 
often. 

Man cannot be truly spiritual, that is, true to the 
divine laws of his being, and at the same time be 
going the way of the world, and be any thing but a 
hypocrite, for then his actions belie his better spir- 
itual understanding. 

Our systems of education are sadly deficient ; in- 
stead of teaching livirig truth, living philosophy, 
educating the reason and intellect, they are founded 
fundamentally upon popular religion, and upon the 
verbatim acquirement of written school-book knowl- 
edge, which never had, so far as its spiritual under- 
standing or teaching is concerned any just origin. 
The conceptions of school-book writers are generally 
those of church bigots, seeing every thing through the 
contracted avenues of their own minds, made so by 
their early training. 

In the first place, almost all so-called educated men 
are taught religious dogmas from the time they are 
old enough to repeat the "Lord's Prayer" until arriv- 
ing at mature years, and those religious ideas are 
simply certain faiths in an old traditional record — I 
say traditional because ancient history proves it ex- 
clusively so — called the Bible, for the truth and au- 
thority of which there never has been any reasons 
given, save the saying of the priests, that it is God's 
word, and at their say-so must be believed, and 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 71 

their forms and ceremonies, based thereupon, be ad- 
hered unto, or else humanity must be damned ! 

These ideas concerning Deity and his instructions, 
and their worship, are assiduously and ^sidiously 
inculcated into the young mind until they become a 
second nature,- that is, supplant the natural aspira- 
tions and give bias to the mind for a lifetime. Hu- 
man nature is naturally religious, and the inherent 
sentiments of reverence in the young are easily 
wrought upon and moulded, doing which has been 
the object and work of the ministry for centuries. 
Upon these popularly and thoughtlessly accepted doc- 
trines of religion the various systems of education are 
founded, giving no chance to the natural, inherent ten- 
dencies, — which are ever good if only left free and 
taught truth — to aspire in the direction of the really 
spiritual, so that the young are moulded and their 
minds stultified by teaching them a dead letter, a 
dead religion, which arrive at no real spiritual facts 
by dint of philosophic investigation and inquiry, but 
simply say oelieve, have faith and reason not, and you 
shall be saved ! Believe in what ? I would ask. Why 
that what the ministers tell us concerning an old 
compilation from the dust of ages, called Bible, is 
living truth, is the word and instructions of an infi- 
nite God to a finite people, all enclosed in a small 
volume which a person can carry in the pocket — a 
pigmy representation of divine revelation when com- 
pared to the great and LIYING chart of nature — a 
guide for all time to come, for a progressive people, 
and ask no questions of a, philosophic nature." Popu- 



-~mm 



72 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

lar religion does not admit of scientific questioning, 
as the investigations of geology, astronomy, and all 
the sciences prove, for science is simply the unrav- 
elling of Nature and learning her truths, which at the 
same time unravels popular Christianity and reveals 
its fallacies, showing it to be a man-made institution, 
having for its object worldly power, and not spiritual 
advancement, and in no way connected with the beau- 
tiful laws and truths of Deity ; bears in it nothing of 
science or spiritual philosophy. No, indeed ! it would 
be like nursing the adder at the breast to put science 
among religions, for their life-currents would be so 
poisoned from the stings of the adder of truth, that 
soon would they go into convulsions which would 
end their rotten existence. 

I am asked, perhaps, what I would substitute in 
place of the present prevailing systems of religion, as 
a restraint to wrong tendencies. What substitute ? 
good heavens ! what could be substituted /ws^y but 
truth, beginning with the young mind, and teaching 
it the truths of its own existence ; giving it spiritual 
insight into the laws of its own being. "What .do ? 
teach truth instead of falsehood, instead of supersti- 
tion, and forms, routines, and tread-mill duties, and 
soon would be apparent the progress of mankind in 
right directions ; soon would the moral worth of hu- 
manity be very much improved, and the races of men 
and women become noble specimens of elevated, re- 
fined, and spiritualized human beings. But cease 
teaching the young dogmas which place them in false 
relations to their own natures, and give them instead, 



BELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 73 

inculcations of Goofs universal truths, and see how 
soon they will grow to be humane, charitable and 
real Christ-like beings. 

If the young were rightly educated, by teaching 
them first the simple truths of their own organisms, 
and to deal with the world of life about them upon 
just principles inherent in the human soul, there 
would be no necessity for the temperance lecturers 
and various local reformers that now traverse the 
land, trying to do away with the effects of a wrong 
system of education, while the causes are still in force. 
Until causes are removed, effects will continue. If 
children are taught wrong ideas from infancy concern- 
ing life and a Deity, and to revere those wrong ideas 
as an indefinable awe, a spell put upon them by the 
clergy, of course, they are warped out of their natur- 
al inclination of mental vigor, and a bias given which 
is very apt to follow them through life, unless it is 
now and then a mind possessed of great native strength 
of intellect, which all the long-instilled dogmas of old 
theology failed to crush out. 

The slavery imposed by popular religion thus be- 
gins in early childhood, and is so thoroughly incul- 
cated as to supplant the natural aspirations, and in 
adult age is borne through sheer ignorance of the 
higher, nobler, better religion of nature. It becomes 
a time-worn custom with them, and is followed from 
force of habit rather than reason: indeed, reason 
would soon clash with its falsities and find out its ab- 
surdities. But reason, that God-like faculty of the 
human soul, is very seldom used to any extent, be- 
4 



74 INTELLECTUAL FKEEDOM. 

cause early crushed out by the instillation of super- 
stitions and forms, of routine duties, imposed by the 
ministry, and enforced by parents. 

We study into the science of life, and bring to light 
the truths of nature and then we see every thing free, 
acting according to the wise laws of a creative wis- 
dom ; in all the kingdoms of nature is life free save with 
mankind : here a few hold sway over the many, keep- 
ing them in mental servitude by means of long im- 
posed superstitions and doctrines concerning & personal 
God, who, they tell us, is pleased or wrathful, accord- 
ing as we follow out the meaningless ceremonies of 
church or not. Ceremonies and customs by which the 
few keep up their worldly power and support. 
- Let us look into this matter of routine, professional 
religion a little more closely, and see how well it cor- 
responds with good sense, philosophy and reason. 
And I commence with the assertion, that God made 
and now governs the world by laws which work in 
order, harmony, and beauty ; therefore if he intended 
mankind should have any set form of worship, any 
more than living out the laws of their natural lives, 
why has He not given that form in a definite and dis- 
tinct instruction, so that all may know the proper 
manner of doing the reverence he demands? Does 
the creative wisdom-principle work by order, exact- 
ness, and decision, or is creation left at loose ends, with 
nothing definite ? If by order and decision — which 
every phenomenon of nature proves — then why in the 
matter of religion, that of all other concerns it is 
most essential we should rightly know, has Deity left 



EELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 75 

us to gain a form as we may ? In other words, if 
He is all order, conciseness, and decision in every thing 
else, why not so in religion ? Is religion, or right 
living, of so little moment that it is unnecessary to 
have any divine instructions given concerning it? 
Perhaps it will be said, that we have ample instruc- 
tions in the Bible, which are concise and plain ; then 
if so, I would ask why so many different forms and 
creeds in the world ? — about six hundred — for if God 
has given any instructions for a particular form of 
worship, then one only of all the prevailing creeds — 
that is, if His is known — must be right, and all the 
others necessarily wrong, so that only about one-sixth 
part of all the professed Christians are really so ; now, 
which of the six hundred is right, or established by 
God, is the question — a question which has been 
much discussed by the clerical profession, and which 
all claim to have settled in their own favor, therefore 
it is proper to infer that all are wrong, and that none 
are strictly founded upon the great progressive and 
harmonious laws of nature. These are important 
questions, if there is any truth in the prevailing 
theology, but if it is as rotten as it appears to be, 
then it is not worth questioning. 

If, on the contrary, there is no God-given creed — 
save the observance of the laws of our nature — which 
every scientific investigation proves, and every phe- 
nomenon of life distinctly avows, then what must be the 
terrible sins to answer for, by those whose whole lives 
are spent in the study and investigation of this very 
matter of religion, and who should know, and do 



76 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

know what they teach, and still persist in building 
M-AN-made creeds, and from the so-called, sacred 
desk from Sunday to Sunday, imposing them upon the 
ignorant world's people as God^s requirements of 
them !' They tell you that to be saved, and thus avoid 
that horrible hell they picture, in which all who are 
not Christians are eternally damned, you must enter 
the church, take oaths of allegiance, and pay your 
dollars for its support, which is simply the support of 
a set of professional men, too lazy to get their living 
in any honorable way — by real and worthy toil. 

Oh ! what a curse to humanity is that teaching, 
which blights and benights the spiritual understand- 
ing, and makes bigots of God's free and noble souls. 
Either there is a God-given creed of partictdar 
forms and rituals, or there is not. Now, ye priestly 
throng ! take which horn of the dilemma you choose. 
If there is, then the whole civilized world must know 
it, as it is given to the world for man's guide, and of 
itself would be the civilizing and enlightening power 
of the world, consequently there could be no variance 
of creeds,, forms, and ceremonies, but all people would 
come under one creed, and that the Divine ; therefore 
there is no God-given creed of particidar form, as the 
evidence of the worldly creeds prove by their numbers 
and distinctions. On the contrary, if there is no divine 
creed of set forms, then what blasphemers and mock- 
ers are ye, to impose your own senseless forms, under 
the garb of divine religion, in the stead of Deity's 
beautiful laws of nature, and wise instructions, which 
gleam forth in every phenomenon of universal power 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 77 

and life. These are grave considerations, and should 
command the most careful investigation of all 
men and women, for it is a matter of mnch impor- 
tance to us all, whether we shall be longer held in 
mental slavery, and the best spiritual aspirations of 
our natures crushed out by false teachings, or whether 
the mind shall be left free, and given that expansion 
and scope for thought, that enables it to delve into 
effd understand the laws of its own condition. 

It is time the shackles of old theology were shaken 
off the mind, and the restraints and false teachings it 
imposes done away with, which, thank higher 
power, is fast approaching. 

Why ! look abroad upon the world and witness the 
grandeur, beauty and sublimity of creation ; ask 
philosophic questions concerning the cause of all this, 
measure with the science of astronomy feebly, the 
vast distances of the orbs and worlds of the universe 
from each other ; contemplate the supreme power that 
keeps such a stupendous machinery in motion where 
the different parts are millions and billions of miles 
apart, and yet the order and harmony, the never- 
ceasing action is perfect ; I say, contemplate this 
magnificence of the creation by first viewing the di- 
mensions of our own small earth, and then comparing 
it, as a part, to the whole / let the mind stretch into 
unfathomable abyss stnd imagine the glory and majes- 
ty of the supreme power, that has neither beginning 
nor end, who is all life, all love, all goodness, all har- 
mony, all order, exactness, conciseness and science, 
and then turn the thoughts within little self, and by 



78 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

means of the sciences of anatomy and physiology, note 
its wonderful mechanism : reflect that its science of 
life is a part of the illimitable science and mystery of 
the infinite, and after dwelling until the mind is in 
awe and wonder at the power, vastness, and beauty 
of universal life, then narrow it down to a church 
creed, contemplate in turn the routine, sesame per- 
formances of its order, and draw conclusion between 
its narrow ideas, its limited notions of God, heaverP- 
an eternal city jpaved with gold ! hell, a vicarious 
atonement, infant damnation, a wrathful, personal 
Deity, who, dressed in the garb of orthodoxy, possesses 
more changeableness, fickleness, and unmerciful atro- 
cities than Satan himself ; exacting a rigid, senseless 
church obeyance, or else sending his children to an 
eternal hell of torment ! I say to my readers, contem- 
plate all the foregoing, and then ask yourselves how 
well the present popular Christian teachings compare 
with the sublimity, beauty, science and wondrous 
order and action of creation. 

A little common sense is the antidote to much evil, 
and applied to religion shows up its inconsistencies, 
absurdities, fallacies, and falsities, and scatters its 
power to the four winds of heaven, as the morning 
sun dissip'ates the dew-drop. 

A]\ this church religion is founded upon a book, which 
existed in the ancient fables and traditions, to a very 
great extent, thousands of years before the Christian 
era ; a book containing accounts of murders, robberies, 
wars, obscenities ; of inconsistencies, lies, contradic- 
tions, and vulgarities, which no other book equals, 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 79 

and yet it is revered as the word of God — a personal 
God. All science proves my assertion, history its 
certainty, and were other and surer proof needed, it 
is only necessary to look at its own internal evidence, 
which is discoverable by reading carefully and criti- 
cally, to any one who has ordinary common sense and 
reason. I know I shall be harshly criticised for 
speaking so irreverently of the Bible, notwithstanding 
it is the truth, which every person who has really 
read the Bible could testify to ; those who have never 
read it of course know nothing concerning it, save 
w r hat they believe, and therefore their opinions are 
worth nothing. So far as the Bible contains truth, I 
revere it, as I would the truth under any circumstan- 
ces, but because there is truth sprinkled through it, 
am I obliged to believe all its falsehoods? What 
mother or father would wish their daughters or sons 
to read the Bible from the beginning to its end, and 
practice every thing they read? Because there is 
some good precepts contained in it which are worthy 
of imitation, would they wish their children to imitate 
and follow all its instructions ? If they are the in- 
structions of Deity, should they not all be followed ? 
Or shall man dictate to Deity by choosing what por- 
tions of its instructions he will follow ? I will here 
give one extract from the Bible concerning the return 
of the Jewish army from one of its murdering and 
plundering expeditions, found in Numbers, chap, 
xxxi., ver. 13-18. 

" And Moses, and Eleazer the priest, and all the 
princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them 



80 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

without the camp ; and Moses was wroth with the 
officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, 
and captains over hundreds, which came from the 
battle ; and Moses said unto them, have ye saved all 
the women alive f Behold, these caused the children 
of Israel through the counsel of Balaam, to commit tres- 
pass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there 
was a plague among the congregation of the Lord ; now 
therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill 
every woman that hath known man by lying with him; 
out all the women-children, that have not known a man 
by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." 

Among all the horrible scenes that ever disgraced 
the records of history, 1 think it would be impossible 
to find a more damnable and disgraceful one than 
that here recorded of Moses. Let any mother im- 
agine herself in the situation of those mothers ; one 
child murdered outright, another destined to brutal 
violation, and herself in the hands of the executioner ; 
let any daughter place herself in the situation of those 
daughters, a prey to the infamous and hellish purposes 
of the murderers of her mother and brother, and what 
would be their feelings % Could they feel that the 
enormous outrages committed were in accordance 
with the commands of a just God, a God of love and 
mercy, a moral and humane God ? It is worse than 
folly to impose thus upon human nature, for it has a 
sanctity of feeling, an inherent moral and religious 
sentiment, that revolts at the mere recital of such 
heinous and barbarous tortures ; and thus I might go 
on making similar extracts from the Bible enough to 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 81 

fill in j volume ; and because I here quote them ver- 
batim, rehash them to the enlightened ear and eye of 
the nineteenth century, is it sacrilege? is it awful? 
cannot I read my Bible and have my reason in it, my 
mind concerning it, without the fear of man before 
my eyes ? Ay ! Truth is stronger than all beside. 
I write for the good of my brotner man, for his eleva- 
tion, and because I do thus it is that I would have 
him understand his nature, and not longer have it 
imposed upon by such infamous stuff as I here quote, 
under the long-instilled belief that it is the word of 
God. I would see every man exercising his own 
mind, using his God-given faculties and not allow 
any of his rights to be usurped by others of his own 
kind and race no better than himself. 

According to the 35th verse of the same chap- 
ter, the number of women-children consigned to de- 
bauchery by the order of Moses was thirty and two 
thousand. All this is the work of Moses, who is the 
paragon of excellence of character and inspiration 
among the famous men of the Old Testament ; a man 
who, the Bible says, talked face to face with God ! 

It is astonishing how gullible are human beings 
upon this topic of Bible and religion, while constantly 
using reason and good sense in every other concern 
of life. Yet I see why it is so : the insidious incul- 
cations of wily men, moral scavengers, into the young 
mind from childhood up, makes thinking upon this- 
one thing out of the habits of living, and conse- 
quently people in general know not what wickedness 
there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up 
4* 



82 INTELLECTUAL FKEEDOM. 

in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that 
the Bible is true, and carry the ideas they form of the 
goodness" and charity of the Almighty to the book, 
which they are taught to believe was written by His 
authority. Good heavens ! it is quite another thing ; 
it is a record of lies, barbarous atrocities, and blas- 
phemy ; for what can be greater blasphemy than to 
ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the 
" God of Love," as in the instance of Moses, which I 
have quoted ? 

I speak strong language, for it is time strong words 
were used, fearlessly used, and the impositions which 
have been for so long a time, and still are being prac- 
ticed upon my fellow-beiugs demand my utterance in 
their behalf: I cannot idly sit and see the young 
mind put into mental slavery in infancy almost, 
which darkens and benights its growing understand- 
ing, by a set of men whose object it is to obtain 
worldly power, and a living, for I see that it is unjust 
and contrary to every divine teaching, contrary to 
science and philosophy, good sense and reason, and 
my soul cries out against the enormous evil. "What 
but for this mental slavery, this stultifying of the 
spiritual faculties, might not humanity become % If 
left free to mature their minds in the strict observance 
of the laws of life, how fast would they shoot ahead 
in knowledge and wisdom, and true civilization and en- 
•lightenment take the places of bigotry and superstition. 

Man is naturally kind, noble and pure, were it 
not for the base intrigues of his brother man, cheat- 
ing him of his hard-earned dollars, benighting his 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 83 

spiritual understanding and keeping him grovelling 
in the dust, giving him tendencies to selfishness, licen- 
tiousness, and the commitment of all crimes, for that 
teaching which keeps the mental capacities in the 
dark; keeps down the culture of the spiritual fac- 
ulties, gives rise to evils innumerable, because not 
giving real and true enlightenment and growth to 
the mind. In proportion as man understands the 
laws of his being, and his spiritual perceptions are 
enlarged to comprehend the true source of life and 
his relations thereto, just in that degree is he a good 
man, living honestly, and for the good of his brother 
man as well as his own ; but that teaching which 
stints and contracts the mind by holding it in bond- 
age to certain worldly ideas instead of PKXNCIPLES, 
tends to make rogues and unprincipled men. 

To rear good children it is only necessary to ob- 
serve the laws of life in marrying and procreating, 
and then, when born, teach them the simple truth, 
teach them nature and the knowledge it reveals : 
teach them principles instead of creeds and dogmas, 
and by reason and philosophy educate the intellect. 
But this is now prohibited : old theology stands at 
the very foundation of all schools, and instills its 
poison into the young mind before it is old enough to 
reflect, and the consequence is, teachers are bigots 
mostly, and the systems of education matters of form 
quite as much as real learning. The mind is kept so 
constantly under the influence of religious teachings 
which are contrary to nature and philosophy, that it 
loses, to a very great extent, its power of reason and 



84 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

reflection, because losing its natural spiritual aspira- 
tions ; it learns to view every thing as material, be- 
lieving God to be more in the priest and church and 
unknown somewhere, than in the scientific studies it 
follows; therefore the life principle that quickens 
thought into acuteness is quenched out, and the mind 
left to grope among old, musty volumes and rigid 
forms of study, to the exclusion of all that beautiful 
and highly instructive study of nature, which lies all 
around in the world about, and is all life, knowledge, 
and wisdom. 

As I glance back through the records of the past, I 
see that in every age of the historic world has the 
progress of civilization, and the diffusion of general 
knowledge been sturdily opposed by the clergy. No 
new discovery in science and literature, unless of an 
ecclesiastical nature, but what they have fought stren- 
uously against, while every reformer and civilizer has 
shared their persecutions. The great Galileo, whose ma- 
jestic mind peered into the vast and wonderful science 
of astronomy, and by means of the telescope, brought 
down the family of the heavens to the comprehension 
of man ; Faust, whose art of printing, in the fifteenth 
century, was deemed and denounced by them as an in- 
vention of the devil ; Newton, Mesmer, down to the 
eminent men of our own time, such as William Lloyd 
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, and many others of eminence, have 
been alike subject to their abuses, bitter denuncia- 
tions and uncharitable attacks, ill becoming the pro- 
fessions of those calling themselves priests of God, 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 85 

and sitting in high places! Little, indeed, in any 
age of the world, have the clergy shown any thing 
like a Christian spirit, and practised what they preach; 
neither now do we find them any more liberal and 
charitable towards the advance of science, save that 
the popular intelligence will not allow them to say 
as much as formerly, yet they still use their influence 
in opposing every new thing in the scientific world, 
which does not accord with and uphold their profes- 
sions ; while the spirit of real Christian virtue is as 
little manifest as in olden times. They war not only 
with every progressive step in the outer world, but 
with each other, sect arrayed against sect, in most un- 
charitable terms. 

Fortunately for the world, however, their opposi- 
tion has proved inadequate to stay the rapid march 
of Science — the parent of all truth — the philosophic 
unfoldings of which is God's language to the world, 
and revelations to man. It has been the aim of the 
clerical profession not to advance science, but to op- 
pose it and keep their adherents in bigotry as much 
as possible, for well they know, that in the ignorance 
of the people lies the secret of their power ; but really 
enlighten the popular mind in true spirituality — as I 
am most happy to know, is now being rapidly done 
— and the priestly power which now enslaves so many 
minds in spiritual darkness, will soon lose its influ- 
ence so to do, and the common understanding be very 
much enhanced. 

This religious slavery, I have said, is based upon a 
book called God's word, but really a book raked up 



86 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

and compiled from the fables and traditions of the 
dark ages, long before the Christian era began. Let 
ns now look a little into the merits of the book, and 
see how well it bears out my assertion, for my state- 
ment is based upon historic lore. According to the 
account of creation given in the Bible the earth is 
only about six thousand years old, while really the 
length of time it has existed man cannot tell ; but, by 
means of its own science, Geology, we know it to be 
very much older than the time here given, and the 
facts in relation to the history of the human race 
shows it to have existed thousands and thousands of 
years before the Bible account, at least four thousand 
years ; while Geology discovers the fossil remains of 
man at least 35,000 years old, and, as has been stated 
by some investigators, 100,000 years. These are 
general hints at great and mighty facts, without going 
into detail, which the Bible can never overthrow, not- 
withstanding the antagonism of the two accounts, 
viz. : that which God has written, with the finger 
of time upon the long-buried and ever-living tablets 
of nature, and that written by ignorant man upon a 
dead page, a dying record, in a very stupid and blun- 
dering manner. Further, the absurdity of the Bible 
account is seen when it says, that in the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth in six days, 
and the earth was without FORM and void, — imagine 
a thing without form ! — and says the evening and 
the morning were the first day, and so on until the 
fourth day, when the sun was created. Now I would 
ask in all sincerity, how there could be morning and 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 87 

evening without a sun? and how the earth could have 
been made before the sun, when the science of As- 
tronomy reveals to us the fact, that the sun is the 
central orb of this constellation, holding all the small 
orbs, among which is our earth, revolving in duty 
about it, and probably also being the parent of all the 
smaller orbs in its presence. 

Again, I would ask in what beginning is meant, 
when it says, in the beginning, &c. ? Further along 
it says Adam and Eve were the first human beings, 
and had two sons, Cain and Abel, but Cain killed 
Abel, leaving but three human beings in the world, 
for up to this time Seth, the third child, was not 
born; yet we are immediately told by the same 
record, that Cain, being driven from the Garden of 
Eden in consequence of having killed his brother, 
" went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt 
in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden, and knew his 
wife ;" which land of Nod was not probably far off, 
.as they had no railroads in those days. Now in the 
name of truth, where did Cain get his wife if Adam 
and Eve were the first human beings ? He certainly 
did not marry his mother, for she remained in the 
Garden with Adam, while Cain " went out" from the 
Garden and found him a wife ! All this, recollect, is 
before the birth of Seth, who was the third son, Gen. 
iv. chap., verse 25. And not until after this had 
Adam and Eve any daughters, chap, v., verse 4. And 
so from beginning to end, this pretended word of God, 
which has been imposed upon the people so long as 
such, is full of lies and inconsistencies, absurdities 



88 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

and obscenities without parallel. It is nothing but 
mere ignorance and superstition to believe such stuff 
to be God's word ; for do you not suppose that God, 
who is the mighty builder, controller, and sustainer of 
the world, with its science, beauty, and perfectness, 
could write a more consistent record than the Bible ? 
Ay ! God does not write words for man save those 
written in the phenomena, wonderful, beautiful, and 
sublime, of universal law. In the science of creation 
may man ever read useful and truthful lessons of life, 
of morals and religion, to do which he need not be- 
come a slave to a mess of church forms and ceremo- 
nies, senseless in the extreme. 

Notwithstanding the palpable and glaring contra- 
dictions and ignorant inconsistencies of the Bible, men, 
calling themselves intelligent, make its study and re- 
search a, profession, and palm it off upon the ignorant 
world's people for God's instructions to them ! I say 
ignorant, for people are certainly ignorant concerning 
the Bible, or they would not thus be deceived and im- 
posed upon. Can men, making this book a life study 
be honest in representing it as God's word? How 
came the clergy to know more of God than other men, 
that they can negotiate between earth and the Eter- 
nal ? Is Deity a respecter of persons, that he should 
give to them only, that the rest might get it by hear- 
say? Ay! they even dictate to the Almighty, and 
make Him do the most enormous crimes, such as 
damning for all eternity the greater portion of his 
children, cursing or olessing them according as they 
follow after the priests or not, and go through church 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 89 

forms : making also a portion of his children elect / 
others damned before they^ire born ! They tell you 
that a man cannot enter heaven, or happiness, be he 
ever so good, unless he goes through church doors 
and prayers ! in other words, unless he pays for it in 
dollars and cents ! 

How much, reader, does this look like your con- 
ception of a just, supreme, and good God, who is all 
LOVE ! It smacks to my understanding over-much of 
worldly power and interest ; of aristocracy and man- 
government. Man's spiritual understanding is his 
freedom ; cramp that and he becomes a mental slave. 
Just in proportion as man learns the philosophy of 
his own being so does he become good, for he sees 
laws which he admires and loves, and aspires to be 
like. This, the prevailing theology does not teach : 
there is nothing of a philosophic nature in its instruc- 
tions, but rather dead senseless routine and form. It 
dwells not upon science, nor teaches man any thing 
concerning his nature, present or future, but leaves 
him hanging on by means of faith and belief, to he 
knows not what ! He is taught to have faith and be 
satisfied; and if his faith should fail to comprehend 
the whole religious system clearly, if his reason rebels 
and he becomes too inquisitive, excommunicate him 
from the order, as has been done in thousands of in- 
stances. . 

The moment a man in the church becomes any way 
liberal in his views, begins to think, then is the church 
afraid of him, because it is dangerous to tolerate such 
heresies as free thought and speech, and if he will not 



90 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

retract and succumb to priestly tyranny, then he must 
be shuffled off, lest he contaminate others with his 
God-given aspirations, free thoughts and liberal views. 
Having glanced at the beginning of the Bible and 
pointed to the first of its glaring inconsistencies and 
untruthful statements, I come now to consider a few 
of the ideas set forth in religious teachings. The hu- 
man race, according to religious dogmas, dates from 
the man Adam, whom the church advocates fabulously 
place in the fabulous garden of Eden, and then fabu- 
lously state that from one of his ribs, extracted by 
Deistic fingers, was made Eve, the first (fabulous) 
woman, in whose sinning, through the beguilement of 
the serpent, Adam was induced to partake of the 
forbidden fruit — fabulous fruit also — and thus the 
whole succeeding work of the Almighty, in making 
human beings, became a failure from the beginning, 
to partially reclaim which, he sent his son into this 
world to die (!) that sinning mortals might be saved 
in a fabulous heaven — in other words immortality 
died for mortality ! An improbable, impossible, and 
fabulous story, concocted by the priests out of ancient 
fables, as a means to gain power over the people. God 
made the earth and all that is in it, including man and 
woman, and "saw every thing he had made and behold 
it was very good," all in six days — our days, because 
they had morning and evening, sun ana moon — and 
notwithstanding " it was very good" the woman he 
had made outwitted him in the outset, and destroyed, 
so far as human creation — which was the highest, and 
therefore cost the greatest divine effort and labor — 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 91 

was concerned, his sublimest effort, and not only so, 
but made it necessary, imperatively necessary — so that 
God is dictated to — for him to damn the greater por- 
tion of his creation of human beings for all time to 
come — or at least until popular Christianity shall have 
redeemed the world (!) — to eternal torment ! What a 
sublime story ! ! ! It is too foolish, ridiculous, and 
absurd to retain the candid belief of any sensible 
person for a moment. I should very much dislike to 
commit such blasphemy and sacrilege against my 
maker as to adhere to any suchworship or belief. 

Let us now look a little into their wonderful doctrine 
of vicarious atonement, through which, they tell us, the 
world is to be reformed ; at least some portion of it some 
thousands of years hence, perhaps ; of course, the past, 
which has gone to its grave unshrived, is all lost ! 

Before Christ's birth into the world, there existed 
two Gods — so the story runs — who had an adversary 
in the form of the Devil, who was too much for them, 
that is, for God and Holy Ghost, and whose power of 
destruction was greater than these two gods to save, 
notwithstanding God was the Father of the Devil, as 
he is Father of all things, and therefore another God 
had to be created in the form of Christ, in order that 
the world might not be a total failure, wholly at the 
mercy of Mr. Devil ! This is the substance of the 
priestly yarn, in brief. Now they tell us that these 
three Gods, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are one ! 
formerly the Father and Holy Ghost were one, and two, 
but when a third was needed, then came Christ to 
make good the fable, and thus it runs : a virgin con- 



92 INTELLECTUAL FEEEDOM. 

ceived and bore a son ; the father of this conception 
was Holy Ghost, that is, God conceived God (himself), 
with one of his earth children, Mary, and is therefore 
his own author through the womb of a mortal mother, 
for do they not tell ns, these lucid priests, that there 
is but one God, and stilly that God and the Son are 
one and the same, and equal ? Do they not tell us 
that there are a trinity of Gods and yet but one? 
Admitting the possibility of the conception, it looks 
like rather a shameful thing in Deity to debauch a 
virgin, and she his own child ; think of it, Mary 
bearing her own father, God, and God his own con- 
ceiver, to say nothing of the example set. So that 
now we have three Gods, and still but one, that is, 
two and one added are one, and one by some inexpli- 
cable means is three ! Now I think it would quite 
puzzle any scientific mathematician to reconcile this 
matter of orthodox Gods, by making one out of three, 
or three out of one. 

Strange it is, that one man can tell another such 
palpable and absurd falsehood upon the face of it and 
be believed, because pointing to the Bible as authority, 
especially men calling themselves intelligent, and who 
are really so in other m atters of life. 

I have spoken of these things lightly, and yet as 
seriously as they will admit, for such stuff, called 
religious teaching, in the absence of all truth, admits 
of but one consideration at the hands of all candid 
people, and that is ridicule', it is open to nothing 
else, for it does not partake of reason or common 
sense. 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 93 

How different such fabled nonsense, such unreason- 
able stories, from the beautiful truths and philosophic 
laws of nature ! how narrow, superstitious, and bigot- 
ed ! What does man know of himself when educated 
through the church ? how much of the philosophy of 
life does he thus gain ? How much spiritual under- 
standing does he acquire ? Oh ! how much mental 
darkness does he not acquire in relation to his spiritual 
existence, by having his mind, from childhood up, 
stuffed full of theologic lore (!) made up from such 
absurd and ridiculous stuff as I have here shown. 

I did not intend to touch so strenuously upon the 
prevailing creeds at first, believing the best way to 
reform is to bring in the new, and let it crowd out the 
old, but after going somewhat into the philosophy of 
true spiritual culture, and showing the laws of life in 
their relations to human beings, it seemed necessary 
that I should draw the comparison, and show how 
widely apart and different in their teachings are the 
two ; one all science, truth and natural, the other all 
ignorance, superstition and artifice. And, too, as I 
am writing more for the emancipation of the mind 
from bondage than the body, I cannot but dwell some- 
what upon that custom and time-worn institution, 
which most effectually enslaves the mental, and chains 
down to egregious errors and lies, by means of long 
practised cunning, man's noblest spiritual aspirations. 
The physical slavery in our midst is nothing compar- 
ed to the mental ; is productive of not one-tenth part 
of the wrong and mischief to humanity as mental 
bondage ; for the mental is superior to and controls 



94 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

the physical, consequently, that teaching which be- 
nights the mind fits it to be a physical slaveholder. 
ISTo man of true education could hold a slave, because 
a conscience which had been grown under proper cul- 
ture would not tolerate the wrong, but with minds 
used to mental slavery, there appears no wrong in 
physical bondage ; so that back of the palpable physi- 
cal evils in the land is wrong spiritual education, or 
rather I should say, professed spiritual education, for 
that is not spiritual which teaches error, old fogyism, 
superstition, and non-progressiveism. 

To emancipate the mind from the many wrong no- 
tions entertained respecting popular religion, is a 
much greater work than mere physical abolition, stu- 
pendous as that is ; for errors inculcated into the 
young mind and followed until mature years become 
deep-rooted, and require much sturdy effort in their 
uprooting and clearing out, which forcible physical 
abolition will do much towards forwarding. A giant 
blow has been struck by the President of America — 
record it all ye angels of light — at the monster evil 
of physical servitude in the South, and the axe is 
being whetted which shall strike the death-blow at 
the root of the greater monster evil of mental slavery. 
The gateway of the understanding is being opened, 
and the darkness which has so long enthralled the 
mind, will be dispersed by the floods of spiritual light 
ushered in through philosophy and reason. 

There is but one true religion, there can be but one, 
and that necessarily is that which is founded in the 
establishment of the world by the divine power, to 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 95 

know and follow which is true worship. Religion is 
not man made, but Divinity born, a moral attribute 
of the creation, and that set up by man without re- 
gard to natural law, what can it be but sacrilege and 
blasphemy ? Either true religion is heaven born and 
belongs naturally with the human soul, or there is no 
religion, for if God has not established such a thing 
as worship, then marts inventions are not true reli- 
gion, because not an essential part of our existence, 
not being instituted by God. I claim, however, that 
religion proper 'is a part of life, and the term rightly 
used means nothing more than true living, to do 
which is all the worship required of us by Deity, for 
that infinite power has placed us here with laws gov- 
erning, and certainly laws would not have been given 
were they not for our obeyance ; therefore what greater 
homage can we pay to the power supreme than the 
observance of those laws ? Certainly nothing greater, 
and when man, in his selfish and wicked desires for 
power and gain, cunningly invents rituals and forms 
to impose upon his more ignorant brother man under 
the garb of religion, in the place of Deity's beautiful 
laws, what shall we call it ? Is it religion or not f Is 
it right or wrong f Is it worship or blasphemy ? And 
does it tend to open and enlighten the spiritual under- 
standing or not f These are questions which every 
one should ask himself and herself, nor deem them 
answered until from the interior depths of their own 
souls, through thought and reason, the answer comes. 
We are often told by priestly men, that we must 
not reason upon points of Scripture ! what then must 



96 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

we do, since man knows nothing except by reason f 
Why, take their word for it! And pray how did 
they arrive at the right or wrong of what they pro- 
fess to teach ? Was it by faith or reason \ If by 
faith, then reason at once rebels, and says it is not 
worthy acceptance : if by reason, then again reason 
says, I too, can reason : therefore, why are we told 
not to reason ? Manifestly to keep ns in ignorance, 
well knowing, as they do, that a little well directed 
reason would soon explore and explode their frauds 
and sham religions. Now, if man cannot reason upon 
religious things, why upon other things ? Why was 
reason given him if not intended for use ? and if for 
use in one thing, why not in all things ? If a man's 
reason cannot tell him right and wrong, what can f 
Is there any higher power in his possession than his 
reason ? Is not man the highest development of crea- 
tion, — so far as this world is concerned — the acme of 
all embodied intelligence, and is not reason the high- 
est faculty of that intelligence, sitting in judgment 
over all his other faculties ? If so, then what shall 
man know save he use his reason ? We are also told 
to have faith and believe. Believe what ? is it possi- 
ble to believe before we know, and can we know with- 
out the exercise of reason ? ]STo ! ~ We can have no 
knowledge of even the slightest affair without the ex- 
ercise of reason. If reason is to have no voice in re- 
ligious affairs, and the Bible is really the inspired 
Word of God, then it might just as well have been 
given to the brutes as to man, for take away a man's 
reason and what is he but a brute ? Ay ! a thorough- 



RELIGIOUS SLAVERY. 97 

ly insane man is worse than a brute, will commit 
more brutal acts. Is it not reason that makes man 
sane f and its deprivation msane ? Thus the clergy 
often attempt to exercise greater power over man, 
greater tyranny, than a monarch, for they would de- 
prive him, if possible, of his God-given reason. 

Deprive our churches of their attraction save the 
preached G-ospel as it comes from ministerial lips, and 
how many would attend them, how long would they 
exist ? Remove organ, architectural adornments, 
fashion, dress parade, music, public opinion, and all 
the incidental attractions, and leave nothing to draw 
forth worshippers but the love of worship, and few in- 
deed would attend, it would be so monotonous, sleepy, 
and uninteresting ! In short, popular religion with- 
out its adornments would become very soon unpopu- 
lar. All this church show is nothing but an aris- 
tocracy j take away its aristocratic elements and it 
would possess no power. Music is harmony of sounds 
in keeping with nature's complete harmony, and is 
worship, the only element of true religion in the 
churches. 

Science, philosophy, and nature are the guides to 
true living, and therefore to true religion and civil- 
ization. It is very easy to profess religion, putting 
on its popular appearance one day in seven, and, per- 
haps, be a rascal the other six, but to be the true 
Christian, that is: Christ-like, requires real honesty, 
true humility, charity and a right understanding of 
self, that that self may be rightly used in all the con- 
cerns of life, temporal and spiritual. 
5 



98 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

There may be, as there often is, a vast difference 
between a professed Christian and an honest man, who 
goes humbly and unostentatiously along through life, 
bestrewing his pathway with kind acts, charitable 
deeds, and noble examples of purity and uprightness. 
True, such a man does not generally gain the clamor 
and applause of the multitude, because not working 
in the harness of popular sentiment and religious rou- 
tine, but he gains that which is infinitely better — a 
good culture and growth of self, becomes individual- 
ized, which is the highest aim of man, receives the 
blessings of poor and honest souls, and, if there be an 
inheritance beyond the grave of bones, its immortal 
boon. 

To be pure-minded, noble and aspirational, to grow 
and expand into fulness of individual growth, pos- 
sessed of qualities which make man what he should 
be, reasonable, decided, humane, charitable, honest, 
moral, and religious, is to be natural, observing na- 
ture's laws, and pruning self thereby with honest en- 
deavor. Man has all he can justly do in weeding and 
pruning his own garden and vine. It is his, and for 
him to cultivate ; none other can do it for him, neither 
can he rightly care for his own, if engaged in attend- 
ing to those of others. Self is bis- portion in life to 
prune, and he must nourish that self rightly, by 
giving it proper care and food, and thus outgrow its 
inherent properties into ripeness, to the expansion 
and ripening of which there is no end, if but the right 
way and means for doing so are understood. From 
the acorn outgrows the staunch and majestic oak, so 



EELIGIOTTS SLAVEKY. 99 

man, by bringing out what is in him, growing it, en- 
larging and perfecting it, becomes the strong, high- 
minded, noble, dignified man, truly learned and wise. 
Man cannot cultivate the natural powers greatly by 
any process of ^stuffing of other people's ideas, the 
outgrowth of their brains, but must outgrow his own, 
by studying the laws of his being, the mechanism of 
his own machinery, and moving it in accordance 
therewith. Here lies the great secret of greatness, viz. : 
to rely upon the natural powers within self, and out- 
grow them ; thus enlarging and ripening the brain 
into a perfected instrument for the reception of 
thought. An organ of the brain cannot act with 
power, any more than a muscle, until it is developed 
by use, therefore thinJc, oh, man ! grow self, train all 
your faculties, the spiritual equally with the rest, 
place all under the guidance of your own reason, and 
become a MAN ! a true, dignified, noble man • and 
when you have grown self, you will find that self 
equal to all its own needs, knowing how to truly live, 
truly worship, and to be truly good, fulfilling the 
simple divinely imposed duty of being an honest and 
natural man. 

A few words more before I close this chapter, in 
relation to the churches. As I look abroad, over our 
land, and note the costly houses of worship, which 
rear their tall spires heavenward in every city, involv- 
ing millions and millions of dollars in their erection 
and maintenance, I ask myself how much this great 
fund, used with the yearly efforts which now accumu- 
lates it in the church, might do toward relieving the 



100 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

suffering poor of our country ? Instead of taking from 
the poor man's labor his mite of hard-earned means, 
and putting it within the coffers of church, how much 
better would it be to distribute it among the poor 
with the same zeal and energy that is now put forth 
to gather and hoard it up in costly church edifices ! 
How much more humane and Christ-like ! and how 
much more noble the act, and elevating. Would not 
worship be quite as acceptable to the Almighty if it 
were less showy, and given in less costly houses ? 

Ah ! fortunate, indeed, it is for the modem church 
and prevailing Christianity, that Christ does not live 
to-day in America. Methinks he would consider it 
somewhat different from preaching by the wayside, 
and to all people, out in the fields, groves, temples of 
nature, where the incense of heaven baptizes all alike, 
and the inspiration of sweet nature lifts the soul in 
humble admiration and reverence to a just God, who 
has made all this beautiful creation, and placed man 
therein, to live according to the laws of reciprocal 
unity, in peace, prosperity and happiness — a humble, 
charitable, moral and natural being, filled with that 
love towards his fellow-men which God gives to all. 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 101 



CHAPTER Y. 

PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 

Enormous as is the evil of physical slavery, which 
has been for so long a time, and still is an encum- 
brance upon our fair land, yet it is of small conse- 
quence compared to that mental slavery of which I 
have treated in preceding chapters, and of which 
physical slavery is one of the results. I say that 
mental slavery is much the worst, because out of it 
grows the many physical evils in our midst, which 
only being seen by superficial observers, are deemed 
the tntire wrong, while really they are the effects of 
deeper causes, and those causes mental darkness and 
ignorance. Evils, such as I speak of, vanish rapidly 
before true enlightenment and civilization, because, 
being the effects of wrong mental culture and igno- 
rance, they disappear just in proportion as the causes 
are removed, and light and knowledge take the place 
of ignorance and superstition; therefore, I repeat, 
that Mental Slavery is a far more deplorable state of 
bondage than mere physical servitude. 

For further proof of my assertion, there is the/to, 
that intelligent and enlightened people cannot be held 
in physical bondage, but only the undeveloped and 
ignorant. And so it is mentally ; only the uneducated 
and undeveloped spiritually, can be held in mental 



102 INTELLECTUAL FKEEDOH. 

subjection to superstitious dogmas and false doctrines, 
that the few priestly men may hold power over them, 
and thus perpetuate a religious aristocracy, the same 
exactly as the few slaveholders, physically keep power 
over the masses of slaves, and through their labor, on 
means that cost them no wages, donated to them, build 
up and maintain an aristocracy in living. The two 
systems of slavery produce the same results — worldly 
power and aristocracy — which could not be otherwise, 
since they are so nearly allied ; one being the legiti- 
mate or natural effect of the other. Both hold sway 
for worldly aggrandizement and power, and both in 
violation of higher law and principle ; one much more 
grave and evil than the other, however, because pro 
fessing to deal with spiritual things, and teach spirit- 
ual enlightenment ; while really it benights the mind, 
and confines, instead of expands, the interior spiritual 
perceptions, fitting men to become the perpetrators of 
all kinds of evil, as the natural result of their want 
of real, true, spiritual 'knowledge, having which, they 
would be noble, truthful, pure men. 

Thus we see that teaching men, who are their own 
masters physically, wrong spiritual instructions, and 
keeping their minds in ignorance of the beautiful laws 
and truths of nature, of philosophy, and of science, 
which is true civilization, gives to the world an element 
of vast mischief, because such men are free to act out 
the promptings of their education, while the African, 
held in physical and mental bondage too, is not free 
to contaminate the world, and therefore his power for 
executing the evils his situation might prompt, is vastly 



PHYSIC AL SLAVERY. 103 

inferior to the freeman's, while naturally, too, he is 
greatly inferior in development, and consequently in 
power for wrong-doing. The simple holding, then, 
of the poor, half-developed, uneducated African in 
bondage, constitutes, when weighed by higher law, a 
crime in importance quite insignificant to that mental 
slavery which makes of the stalwart sons and fair 
daughters of America mental dwarfs, and puny but- 
terflies of fashion, by degrading the spiritual under- 
standing, stinting and stultifying their God-given 
faculties, planting error, superstition, and artifice in 
the stead of truth, love, and wisdom. 

The nation, with its war and turmoil, is fast uproot- 
ing physical bondage and giving freedom to the slave. 
Northern sentiment, based more upon principle and 
justice than the Southern, would not allow the un- 
limited wide-spread of the nefarious schemes of the 
South, and therefore she began " kicking against the 
pricks" of stern opposition, little thinking, in her short- 
sightedness, that she was stirring up the elements of 
right and wrong into such antagonism as should prove 
the downfall of her long-cherished institution of sla- 
very ; yet so it is. And not only so, but arousing the 
latent principles of justice throughout the whole coun- 
try to such an extent, that all the long existing causes 
of evil, which have been and are insidiously working 
to man's retardation of progress spiritually, will soon 
be swept with the ruins of physical slavery into the 
forgotten past : false doctrines and theories, error and 
superstition must give way before the swift advancing 
tide of true civilization and enlightenment, which this 



104. INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

age, the age of reason and insight, is unfolding. The 
eternal principles of right and justice are coming up- 
permost, and before the light of divine truth all wrong 
and falsity must pale, swept with the ruins and dust of 
ages into oblivion, by the " bright shining light" of 
spiritual science. 

Back of all the apparent wrongs in the land are 
deep-hidden causes, which pervade all conditions of 
society, and revolution will not stop the turning of her 
mighty wheel until we stand as a nation purified from 
our sins, the measure of which is the penalty we pay. 
Hoot and branch must the monster tree of slavery in 
all its forms be pulled out of the national heart, to do 
which we have commenced at the top, chopping off 
its branches, — physical bondage, — and unless we con- 
tinue until its very roots are extracted, it will sprout 
again, firmer and deeper-rooted than before, for future 
generations to battle with. Now is the time to strike 
sturdy blows for our national honor, if we would plant 
a republic upon the God-given principles of truth, jus- 
tice, and liberty. 

This question of African slavery has been agitated 
and discussed almost unlimitedly to prove its justice 
or injustice, and whether it be constitutional or not. 
In a preceding chapter I have endeavored to show the 
proper relation of the terms freedom and slavery by 
the mutual or reciprocal relations of all things, com- 
mencing with universal laws as regulating the astro 
nomical bodies, and observing their mutual relations 
according to law divine, showing this law to extend 
to man as to every thing else ; therefore, weighed by 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 105 

the higher law moral, law of universal reciprocity 
established by Divinity, there can be no hesitancy in 
answering the questions whether slavery be right or 
wrong, and whether justly constitutional. 

If the science of nature, the laws of its life and its 
philosophy, speak any teachings to man, they are those 
of a higher power, and which man cannot justly set 
aside for inventions of his own ; and looking at life in 
all its phases metaphysically, scientifically, and reason- 
ably, we read lessons which unmistakably pronounce 
a judgment upon all systems of slavery, and denounce 
them as evil. Nowhere in the vast arena of the natu- 
ral and beautiful, whose author and sustain er is the 
Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent Power, 
can man find lessons of evil, or read any laws uphold- 
ing slavery in any form, save those of reciprocal unity. 

Nature is all equally an aristocracy, with no false 
pride like that of man ; she is true to her development, 
real and stable. In no unfolding of the natural world 
is there any slavery and aristocracy, save with man : 
he invents it in many forms to impose upon his brother 
man, for wealth and power to gratify his animal pas- 
sions. 

There .can be but one source of reference to deter- 
mine the right or wrong of slavery, and that is divine 
justice, as seen in the one universal law manifest in 
all natural phenomena, — the law of reciprocity. In 
other words, there is a positive and negative power in 
nature which keep an equilibrium, a just balance by 
their mutual blendings. To illustrate : there cannot 
be an ^-positive power regardless of and usurping 

5* 



106 ' INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

every thing else within itself; for instance, the sun is 
positive to the lesser orbs that revolve about it, but 
not all-positive, else it would swallow up, consume, so 
to speak, all the others : on the contrary, however, the 
law mutual is perfect, and the power exerted by the 
sun fully reciprocated by the others, keeping beautiful 
harmony among the heavenly bodies. So in all the 
concerns of a world, there is this law of mutuality, 
regulating all its productions, from the mineral up to 
man, where alone is violation. Man only disregards 
the divine law of control in his earth career, and upon 
short-sighted worldly schemes, fills himself with tem- 
poral power for a time at the sacrifice of principle, to 
satisfy the cravings of an abnormal pride, and then 
explodes into ruin, as the South is now doing with its 
system of negro slavery. 

For many generations has the aristocratic portion 
of the South flourished grandly upon a system of 
labor which has cost them no wages, but the law of 
reciprocal justice has been hanging over them all the 
time, and at last the blow has come ; all the inhuman 
wrongs of Satanic men are being wiped out with 
terrible vengeance, and the lordly aristocracy of slave- 
holders reduced to a condition inferior even to that 
of the slave, for the poor African, although deprived 
of his own native freedom and peculiar modes of 
living, is actually benefited by contact and amalga- 
mation with the white master, while the master now 
sinks into bankruptcy and worldly ruin, to say noth- 
ing of his' moral degradation. Thus the law divine 
of mutuality stands as forcibly just in regard to man, 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 107 

as to all other things, and, though disregarded for 
years, or centuries even, finally makes its rightful 
and stern demands felt and answered. Man holds 
reciprocal relations to his fellow-men, or relations of 
positive and negative interest, and whatever his plane 
of development, as much is exacted as is given : he 
gains his all of life from nature, and if he stands high 
in the scale of unfoldment, his duty is none the less 
imperative to give to the world as much as is received 
therefrom ; that is, if he be enlightened his light must 
be bright and shining, and his acts elevating, not 
binding down, for if he use his superior knowledge 
and power as means to crush out and trample upon 
the rights of his weaker brother, he shall surely in 
turn be crushed, for the law is just and inevitable. 

"What if man disregard justice, court mammon, and 
thrive largely for a lifetime even, what profiteth it 
him ? He cannot lug his worldly gains into eternity,: 
but instead, carries the curses they entail, and in the 
next life pays the penalty of his wrong-doing by tak- 
ing the place his acts, and consequent development, 
fit 'him to occupy — a philosophy and religion which 
teach man to be good. 

The condition of the enslaved and the enslaving is 
not one of reciprocity, of mutual benefit, but en- 
riches one in worldly good at the sacrifice of the 
other's bodily comfort and mental liberty, or owner- 
ship : the law is not respected, and the natural results 
must follow, as they now are doing. There are no 
just reciprocal relations between master and slave, no 
principle of unity binding them together, but instead 



108 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

coercion, one losing all his rights, while the other 
gains them and is proportionately enriched ; one loses 
his own native freedom, and sacrifices life in hard toil 
to satisfy the other's selfish ambition. Looks this 
like justness, like principle, like reciprocity and hu- 
manity, like morality, equity and religion ? Yet how 
many arguments have been deduced from that book 
called Bible, to uphold African slavery, and thus per- 
petuate an institution in which all the above-named 
qualities are wholly wanting. And taking the Bible 
as authority, the arguments from it are very strong 
in favor of slavery, and naturally enough since the 
whole object in the compilation and manufacture of 
the Bible, is the enslavement of the mental, for pre- 
cisely the same ends as physical enslavement, viz. : 
wealth, power, aristocracy and leisure. 

This same system of mental, or religious slavery 
is indirectly the cause of so much ignorance and pov- 
erty in the world, because it teaches a system of ethics, 
which carried out in social and business life results 
in the infernal monopolies, speculations, and dishon 
esties, that now enrich the few far beyond their needs, 
and leave the million slaves to poverty, many actually 
starving ; for does not popular Christianity teach doc- 
trines of election, one-side-ism, that they are better 
than others ? and are they not going to monopolize 
all of God's beautiful heaven to themselves exclusive- 
ly, while they consign all the rest — about thirteen- 
fourteenths — to eternal torment, because they are not 
like them f Is not my assertion true ? Are not the 
proofs of it apparent everywhere throughout society ? 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 109 

Where is found the most church influence, is not there 
also found the most slavery to fashion, pride, and 
wealth ? 

I say, that teaching which produces mental slavery 
is the cause of all physical bondage, because it teaches 
falsehood for spiritual truths, and gives to the human 
understanding really no enlightenment in regard to 
the real and beautiful truths of its nature ; does not 
open the fount of life to man through philosophy and 
reason, but rather blinds and stints his natural per- 
ceptions, and therefore turns him into channels of 
thought and business which are in accordance with 
his early inculcations — his education. That teaching 
which shows a man his real and true position in life, 
which unravels the metaphysics of his own existence, 
revealing to him the beautiful and wise laws of his 
own being, makes him a good man. Other than this 
depraves him, for that is depravity which departs 
from divine instructions. 

Man cannot substitute his own nefarious schemes, 
devoid of principle, in the stead of the beautiful, pro- 
gressive, harmonious, and wise laws of the Eternal, 
and be good, nor long flourish. 

There are principles of life as intimately woven 
into our existence as life itself, and those principles 
are the inevitable laws of being, which cannot be over- 
thrown. 

Nations come to wars as the natural results of 
man's disobedience to divine law, not from divine de- 
sign. The turmoils of man are only the elements 
immediately connected with him, upheaving and con- 



110 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

flicting with divine justice because of his disobedience, 
and each time they do thus, divine justice rules with 
more power — reform is more complete. Ideas that 
are worldly, unholy, impure and unjust, are acted upon 
and embodied into institutions, which institutions, not 
having a right basis, soon work their own ruin, be- 
cause, forsooth, divine rule is stronger than man's. 
These ideas are generally inculcated in the early reli- 
gious training of the child, and carried out into action 
as it grows into manhood. Thus it is with physical 
slavery : back in the religious training, and consequent 
aristocracy of the old world, were engendered the 
ideas which gave rise to American Slavery, and 
through the religious teachings and ecclesiastical pow- 
er which has underlain the education of the American 
People, has it been perpetuated, until now the ruin 
it has worked for itself is at hand. 

"Wrong, I repeat, is the result of ignorance — igno- 
rance of principle, of science, philosophy, truth — and 
ignorance is the result of that system of education 
and religious training which teach avarice, selfishness, 
uncharitableness, special favors and vicarious atone- 
ment, election and one-side-ism, eternal damnation 
and special salvation, and many base notions, base 
because untruthful. It is all this that has supported 
physical slavery in our fair land and upon our fertile 
soil for so long a time, a land called free, and a nation 
shouting liberty ! But thanks to the powers ruling, 
the stain is fast being wiped out, the disgrace cast into 
oblivion, and the causes probed to their centre : the 
axe is being laid at the root of the tree, and old theol- 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. Ill 

ogy and superstition outrooted from their strongholds. 
With the cessation of hostilities in the field will come 
the warring of the political, social, and religions ele- 
ments of society ; in fact they are already jarring and 
working, and the principles of divine justice and 
truth, like the leaven in the meal, at work leavening 
the whole. Right must prevail and reforms come, 
reforms in habits of living, dress, business, thinking 
and acting, else the American People will soon, dwin- 
dle into complete physical degeneracy, from disregard 
of the simple, healthful laws of life. 

What gain is it, I ask, to waste a whole lifetime in 
pursuit of the almighty dollar ? To enjoy the good 
and beautiful in life, we must first culture self to an 
appreciating capacity, which is better than great riches. 
The mere matter of wealth does not bring culture, 
and without culture there is little enjoyment ; I mean 
right culture, culture naturally, spending more time in 
studying to embellish the brain with golden thoughts, 
than the pocket with golden dollars. A man may 
have all the wealth in the world, and without culture 
of self is still an ignoramus, not capable of half the 
enjoyment as the poor man by his side. It is what we 
get out of our own heads by culture, that makes us 
truly rich, not what we get into our pockets. Money 
is good rightly used, but brains are better. 

There are the best of reasons, other than that of 
taking what does not belong to one out of the gener- 
al fund, why a man should not labor so hard to be- 
come rich. Supposing, as I have said in a preceding 
chapter, that there should be equality in the distribu- 



112 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

tion of worldly goods, is it not plain that every man 
wonld haye plenty with moderate effort % And in- 
stead of spending all his time in hard toil to compete 
with a selfish world, wearing life out not only thus — 
but giving to himself a one-idea culture, he would 
have plenty of time for self -study, for expanding and 
enriching his interior nature by giving it general 
care, and enjoying his life to the full capacity. Then 
he would have that self-satisfied, complacent happi- 
ness which a true culture gives, whereas now he knows 
of no enjoyment save in the superficial world, through 
his money, and that is never fully satisfying, but leaves 
a restless, haggard, and dissatisfied feeling, which is 
not elevating but rather wearing upon life : a species 
of dissipation that is now so rapidly sapping out the 
healthy life-currents of the nation. 

Honest toil is true worship ; worship of principle, 
justice and truth. Dishonest or selfish toil is worship 
of devil, mammon, pride and passion. If mankind 
hived rightly they would not need such extensive 
trades, gigantic business operations, costly houses, and 
so forth, to satisfy their morbid ambition. Simplici- 
ty, beauty, order, harmony and justice are the divine 
attributes of man. 

Physical slavery comes in as a means to satisfy his 
selfish desires, to gratify an abnormal pride, and give 
a little worldly power for a time, but it is damning to 
the white man to thus gain his wealth, demoralizing 
and degrading to his better nature, his spiritual inter, 
ests and enlightenment, because in direct opposition 
to true spiritual teaching ; while the negro is perhaps 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 113 

actually benefited ; certainly contact and association 
with the more civilized world is a benefit to him, 
though that benefit at the expense of his freedom, is 
doubtfifl. By amalgamation, however, is slavery a very 
great benefit to the black man, but that is an unnatu- 
ral mode of civilization : in his own tropical barbarity 
is his native element, in which are all the refinements 
necessary to his degree of development. Every thing 
in the world has its proper sphere to fill and mission 
to work out in the grand scheme of creation, civiliza- 
tion, and progress, and the African has his. America? 
with her abundant resources, knowledge, and superior 
civilization, can do much towards the enlightenment 
of ignorant, barbaric nations in whatever part of the 
globe, but not properly so by enslaving them, for that 
cannot be done without disastrous consequences to the 
enslaving party, because transgressing divine law, the 
law reciprocal, the law just, and law truth. Slavery 
to the African is not charity towards him, but selfish 
monopoly of him, and though there may result partial 
civilization to him in consequence, yet it makes the 
transgression of the law none the less evil, for like the 
tendency of heat and cold to blend until there is a 
mean between the two extremes, so it is with human 
beings ; the force of circumstances does much towards 
elevating or depressing them, for the tendency in 
their social and businels relations is that of heat and 
cold — to blend. If a man habitually deal or asso- 
ciate with his inferiors from choice or interest, he is 
lessened just in proportion as they are raised. Such 
is the law, which is fully illustrated in the deprav- 



114 INTELLECTUAL FEEEDOM. 

ity of Southern morals, devoid almost entirely of 
principle. 

Man cannot associate with wicked associates with- 
out gradually becoming like them, so a man cannot 
deal in physical slavery without crushing out the finer 
and higher principles of his nature, because he applieb 
his talent to the control and perpetuating of an insti- 
tution which is immoral and unjust, and therefore 
degrading to himself : instead of aspiring to do good, 
dealing with others according to just laws and pre- 
cepts, he disobeys the right, and is proportionately de- 
based, retarded in growth and spiritual advancement. 

Physical Slavery, therefore, is not so great an evil 
to the slave- as to the master; the utter disregard of 
principle it maintains is more disastrous to the white 
man, than is bondage to the black ; for the American 
slave owner is enlightened, and the sole agent in this 
total disregard of right, while the slave is not a vol- 
untary agent in the perpetuation of the system, there 
fore the whole responsibility rests with the master, 
and the penalties incurred in carrying on a wicked 
institution he must answer for. What benefit may 
arise to the slave is wholly unintentional with the 
master, and constitutes no part of the object he has in 
holding slaves, so that morally he is not to have the 
credit of doing any good to the black man, because 
not his intention, therefore the* lea which has been so 
often made in favor of slavery, that the benefit to the 
black man justifies it, is no plea at all, since the only 
object in holding slaves is for gain to gratify selfish 
feelings, and not to do the slave a benefit. 



PHYSICAL SLAVERY. 115 

The more that can be whipped and ground out of 
him the better, is the principle (!) acted upon ; aristo- 
cratic laziness the aim sought, an aristocracy which 
has its sympathy among the aristocrats North, by many 
ties of intermarriages, intertrades, and reciprocal in- 
terests of various kinds, and now that the South, with 
its peculiar system, rebels against the government, 
may be seen the Northern sympathizers showing their 
interests in Southern behalf. Aristocracies are sym- 
pathetic the world over. The church aristocracy, 
wealth aristocracy, and slave aristocracy, are all based 
upon the same selfish, worldly, unrighteous aims, and 
all having one and the same object — -power. 

But there is to be a reign of principle / the age of 
reason begins to see the right, and old aristocracy, 
with all its varied monopoly, must tumble ; its basis 
is unjust, and the advance march of truth will level 
it with the dust. All its base notions and false teach- 
ings the world will soon be emancipated from, by the 
inception of knowledge, truth, and justice. The 
shackles of all bondage will fall off as the light of 
true civilization and religion advances. Old theology 
and superstition stand to-day quaking in their strong- 
holds, for they begin to see through the gathering 
gloom, the rays of true spiritual light, which will 
penetrate their mysteries and dissolve and destroy 
their power. They know' it is only a question of time, 
for as the masses progress in knowledge, just in that 
ratio is ecclesiastical influence gone, and the institur 
tions it gives rise to laid low. 

The march of true civilization has commenced, and 



116 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

the great civil war which now agitates our fair land 
but the infinite powers striking blows for liberty. 
Emancipation is the war-cry, and the reform now 
begun will not cease until a new era is established, 
and that era one of spiritual insight, of principle, truth, 
and justice, of reason, philosophy, and wisdom, and 
of freedom from all bigotry, narrow-mindedness, su- 
perstition, and slavish notions. 

The decree has gone forth: The Emancipation 
proclamation of the Almighty is issued, and the work 
will be done, and well done. Already the soldiers of 
Right, clad in the armor of Truth, stand around 
thick, ready to rush at the war-cry : with their glitter- 
ing bayonets of eternal steel, will they pierce the 
heart of old superstition, and banish ignorance, self- 
ishness, and oldfogyism, with knowledge, love, and 
wisdom. Reason, the dictator of the human will has 
raised its voice for justice, and methinks I see mar- 
shalled upon the plains of invisible life, the hosts of 
the " mighty dead," ready to strike in Reason's cause, 
and help place liberated humanity upon planes of more 
elevated, dignified, noble man and womanhood. 

The tocsin of the Infinite has sounded the alarum, 
the war-cry, is heard, the march is forward, and the 
instigators, perpetrators, and perpetuators of human 
enslavement cannot flee from the wrath to come. 
Stern Justice, with its law reciprocal, stands ready to 
administer meet reward ; to each wrong its penalty 
until all are atoned for. Law infinite cannot be 
evaded ; it offers every thing, and exacts full obedi- 
ence. 



EPILOGUE TO AMERICA 117 



CHAPTER VI. 

EPILOGUE TO AMERICA. 

Action is always preceded by an idea necessarily ; 
action is the execution of an idea. If the idea be 
wrong the action is wrong, and therefore the result is 
also wrong ; consequently all the evils which beset 
communities and nations, are the effects of wrong 
ideas executed. Ideas are right or wrong in propor- 
tion as they embody divine principles. There is no 
standard of right but the divine, and in just so much 
as man learns and heeds that, in so far is he wise. 
Nations are made up of individuals, and in proportion 
as individuals are wise, so will be the nation, there- 
fore the national authority should be directed to the 
right culture of the individual, seeing to it, that insti- 
tutions for education, intellectually and morally, are 
based upon divine principles. 

Governmental execution has been to conceive and 
carry out wrong ideas in the past, in some particulars 
of national policy, consequently we have in America 
to-day a powerful civil war, the result of acting from 
wrong ideas : the effect has been true to the cause, 
and civil war, in all its horrid aspects, is but the 
warring of those wrong ideas with principles, and 
which will not cease in secure peace until the cause is 
antidoted by effect ; when, if the nation's actions for 



118 INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. 

the future, be based upon ideas of justice and right, 
there will be lasting peace and prosperity, but should 
she again act unwisely, should she act upon ideas 
antagonistic to principle, the result of such wrong 
action will again be manifest, sooner or later, in na- 
tional war and turmoil. 

Nations like individuals cannot act wrong without 
paying the penalty. 

The Constitution of the United States embodies 
wrong ideas, ideas devoid of justice, and therefore has 
it failed to conduct the nation, in its unparalleled pro 
gress, safely onward, until not a century has she 
sailed thus rapidly on over the great sea of Time, 
before we see her shattered into fragments, and her 
Constitution, in many of its particulars, a dead letter, 
which man can never patch up, and by which she 
can never again steer her course upon the great chart 
of life. 

The emergencies of the times have stricken forever 
from its pages the damnable clauses, that have launch- 
ed us upon so troubled a sea, the waters of which will 
not be still at the commanding. A new constitution, 
embodying Principles instead of wrong ideas, shall 
henceforth guide the " helm of state," and again will 
she sail on smooth seas of peace and progress, a 
"Union strong and great," bidding defiance to all 
the jarring elements and discords of the old world. 




Sr^^y^f 



I INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM ; t 



OR, 



EMANCIPATION 



FROM 



MENTAL AND PHYSICAL BONDAGE. 




CHARLES S. WOODRUFF, M. D., 

AUTHOR OF " LEGALIZED PROSTITUTION, 1 ' ETC, 



SINCLAIR TOUSEY, 

121 Nassau Street, N. T., 
AGENT FOR THE AUTHOR. 



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